Storm's Breeze
by Tear In My Heart
Summary: An origin story for the newest kid on the Marvel block-Cassie Jungwirth. Cassie is fifteen years old, average intelligence, average fitness level, beyond average abilities with air, and has an unhealthy obsession with a World War II hero who died during a special ops mission. His name? Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.
1. Chapter 1

If you don't like it, I'd love to know why. This is my first fanfic and any constructive criticism would be very much appreciated. You don't even have to be nice about it, be as brutal as you want/need.

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Chapter 1

The trees and underbrush got thicker the farther I went. The path had ended a while ago, but there was still enough space to walk so I kept going. Thorns grabbed at my Nike sweatpants and I ran into a few spider webs which made me scream and swat frantically at my face and shoulders every single time.

Although it wasn't the most pleasant walk I had ever had, I was feeling pleased with myself for finding such wild woods. Almost everything in D.C. was flawlessly manicured—even their 'forests'. Most of the time, I walk through the memorials and stuff like that, but today I simply strolled through the trees while thinking about the meaning of life and how the rain had made my hair frizzy yesterday.

I get a bit oblivious when I'm thinking, but something odd caught my eye. A glimpse of black peeked through the trees, and I decided to go check it out. I put my arm in front of my face to keep spider webs and branches away and picked up the pace, half jogging toward whatever it was that I saw. Weaving through the trees, I got more glimpses of black and silver, but since I didn't have my glasses, it was still very hard to make out what it was. One more step, and a particularly large tree was out of the way and I had a clear view of the object which turned out to be a man. I stopped and stumbled back a few steps. Running into a tramp while alone in the middle of the woods did not sound very appealing. I hesitated and stared at the figure haphazardly propped up against a tree with his knees bent close to his chest and his head drooping forward. He seemed to be sleeping. A few steps closer, and I could see scrapes and bruises partially hidden by long stringy brown hair.

His left arm seemed to be covered in a metal sleeve of some kind with a red star painted near the shoulder. I was captivated by the strange man and inched my way forward to get an even better look. A twig snapped under my foot. His head snapped up and he looked straight at me, his eyes narrowed. He pushed himself to his feet but immediately started swaying and his back slammed into the tree behind him as he grabbed his side. I had stepped back quickly when he moved but naturally jumped towards him with a sudden intake of breath when he fell. He slid down the tree, his face contorted in pain but his eyes glaring warningly at me. His movement left a patch of ground bare that I hadn't been able to see before, and I saw drops of blood glistening on the leaves.

"Are you okay?" were the first words out of my mouth, and I took another step towards him. Before I had time to react, the black muzzle of a pistol pointed straight at me. His pain was intentionally hidden beneath a dark and threatening glare directed at me. He motioned with the gun for me to put my hands up, his other arm seemed to be hanging limply at his side. I slowly raised my hands, my brain working furiously on the problem of getting out of this situation. A loud crack and rustling sounded from somewhere behind the man and his head and shoulders jerked around to see what it was. Instantly, his face contorted in pain and he let out a moan as the hand with the gun grabbed his side, inadvertently flinging the gun away in the process. Now that he was unarmed, I ran forward to help him. My knees hit the ground by his side and one hand went out to touch his shoulder while the other moved to try to find out what was wrong with his side. Something grasped my right wrist which had tried to help with his wound. I quickly discovered that his arm was actually made of metal and it felt solid, too. A strange whirring noise was broken by my cry of pain as his hand tightened. I think I heard the bone crunching.

"Please," my voice was abnormally high as a result of the pain, "I can help you. I can get you whatever you need, medical help and food and clothes and, and anything else." His hand loosened and slipped down my wrist at the word 'food.' I gently pulled my arm away from him and he didn't make a move to get it back.

I sat back on my heels a few feet away for safety and gazed at his face, my mouth drooping open. He was looking down at his side although I could tell he was still watching me. Something just looked incredibly familiar about him, and the thought hit me that I had seen this man before. I mentally scanned through the small list of people I know, and the much larger list of people I stalk online, and only two results came up. The scraggly hair suggested a similarity to the guy I had followed on Twitter who was friends with a fan of an author whose work I followed. I shook my head at the thought but hesitated to even consider the other option. But all the same, those eyes. The jaw line. The even tanned skin tone.

Bucky Barnes.

The words got stuck in my brain and one-half split off screaming at me that I was insane, but the other half was still looking at the face before me. Every second he looked more familiar. The identifiable physical attributes all fell into place except for one. Bucky Barnes was in his nineties and dead. This guy was in his thirties and very much alive. But in pain. The thought brought me back into action, and I stood up. Whoever he was, he was hurting and needed help. As I stepped towards him, the phone in my pocket buzzed. Temporarily ignoring it, I stepped towards him softly telling him what I was going to do. Despite my efforts to speak to him normally, the soothing tone I used in my fear of upsetting him probably took on quite a condescending note. He didn't seem to get offended and must have decided that he could trust me, or that at the very least, I was his only option at the moment because he cooperated.

On further inspection, the blood was from a cut on his side that had already closed. The main source of pain seemed to be broken ribs and his right arm which seemed to be dislocated. Even the ribs seemed to be partially healed because he could move slowly without much pain. Incredibly, twelve minutes later, we were walking side by side into town.

We couldn't take the main road into town with him looking like a war-torn soldier and me looking like jungle girl with leaves and spider webs in my hair. Fortunately, I'm very familiar with the back streets and alleys of that part of D.C., but even in the alleys, we turned a few heads. Attracting attention is a logical outcome when you're walking next to a six-foot tall hot mess in a black uniform and a metal arm, but it still was uncomfortable in the extreme and my head stayed down the entire walk. As important as medical attention and food seemed to be, getting the man clothing was the first thing on the agenda. He looked way too conspicuous with a freaking metal arm swinging all over the place.

I got him inside with only six people that I counted staring at us, which I would call an impressively small number. We were in a clothes store that I had been in a few times. I'd never bought anything here, I just occasionally came back because of the really cute cashier who I enjoyed staring at from a distance. I didn't even know if they had a men's section, but I wasn't about to go back outside, so I walked through the store, determined to find something less strange for Bucky to wear.

I surprised myself by thinking of him as Bucky. My senses refused to listen to my brain, which was questioning why I even thought that this tramp being Bucky Barnes was a possibility. But I think my hours spent staring at and obsessing over every available picture and video clip of James Barnes was adding to my mental delusion.

To my relief, there was a men's section in the back left corner of the store, complete with dressing room and all. Bucky stood awkwardly as I pulled a few pairs of jeans off of a shelf and flipped them unfolded. I held one pair out by the waistband and briefly compared sizes between the pants in my hand and the pants he was wearing. Shrugging, I pushed the other pairs back and then turned to the rack of clearance items. I found a jacket that wasn't too thick but would still cover his arm and picked a plain t-shirt. "Can you stay here for a second?" I asked Bucky and didn't really wait for an answer as I rushed up to the register to buy the clothes. Thankfully, the cashier was a middle-aged lady instead of the boy that worked most days. I really didn't need that kind of distraction right now. The store was relatively empty, and there was only one woman in line at the register. My relief changed to irritation as she fumbled around with coupons and invalidated credit cards. Trying to channel my impatience to usefulness, I scanned the area around me and noticed a display of hats. They were mostly baseball caps which I despise, but I saw one particularly nice one and added it to my stack. The woman finally left, and I dropped my pile of clothes on the counter. The cashier gave a poor attempt at a cheerful "How are you?" as she started ringing up my clothes. I, in turn, gave a weak response to her attempt at pleasantries and then, unsure about the store policy, asked, "Um, my friend is in the back and he needs to get changed before we go out to eat. Is it okay if he just goes ahead and changes in the dressing room?" She looked slightly suspicious, but her eyes flickered to her screen and then she nodded.

"Sure, that's fine," she said. I wondered what had made up her mind until I saw the total price of my purchases. Two hundred thirty-two dollars? You'd better let us use the dressing room if I'm paying you that much. I sighed slightly at the amount, feeling like a miserly old man, and then reached into my pocket and pulled out my debit card. I rushed the clothes back to where I'd left Bucky and noticed that he had moved so his back was up against the wall, and he looked rather defensive. The corners of my mouth naturally came up as I tried to make myself look friendly and calming. I started pulling the clothes out of the bag and held them out to him.

"I need you to go in there and put these on. Is that okay?" For a second, I thought he wasn't going to do it, but then he walked straight up, grabbed the clothes and disappeared into the dressing room.

It took longer than I expected, and I found myself pacing in the doorway of the dressing room, hitting the hat that I had forgotten to give him against my thigh. Finally, I stopped pacing and slouched against the doorframe, my fingers still twiddling the hat. I sighed impatiently and glanced around and jumped back when he was right behind me. I think the clothes fit okay, but I'm not sure because it was hard to look anywhere other than his intense eyes. It took me a minute, but I finally got my brain back and remembered that food is the next thing on the list. Unfortunately, his face was still dirty, and he had scrapes and bruises everywhere. It didn't look like he was going to pass for an everyday citizen.

Shrugging, I cleared my throat, "We can go eat now if that's okay with you."

He didn't say anything, but he seemed to watch me more closely when I said 'eat', so I took that as a yes. I knew exactly the place to go. In ten minutes flat, we were sitting down at a booth with red cushions and a once white table. The quiet, going out of business diner was the perfect place. I finally relaxed, nobody here asked questions or shot curious glances. The middle-aged, balding waiter was laid back and took things slow. Of course, he didn't have anywhere to rush off to; we were the only people there.

"So, what do you want?" I asked Bucky.

He looked at me for a second, but then glanced away without saying anything. Sighing, I asked the waiter for a roast beef sandwich, fries, and some coffee. He wrote the order down, though it should have been easy enough to remember it, and lumbered to the back. Bucky didn't seem to have a desire to converse. His eyes moved quickly but purposefully around the room, taking in every detail. Not wanting to carry on a one-sided conversation, I kept my mouth shut and pulled out my phone. Three unread messages were waiting patiently for my immediate attention.

The first message had come almost forty minutes ago: **What is happening**? A few minutes later: **I cannot recommend this course of action.** Followed by: **You should know that you're putting yourself into a large amount of danger.** The last message had come in only a minute ago, **I'm notifying Paul.** Those three words jolted fear into my soul and I hastily typed out, **No! I'm fine**. As soon as I sent that message, I typed **Override code: right direction** and sent that as well **.** I leaned my head against the back of the bench and breathed a prayer that Paul had no idea where I was or what I was doing. The food came before any response on my phone did, so I slid the phone back into my pocket and pushed the food towards Bucky. My phone buzzed and I looked down to see the new message. **Alert canceled. Paul is back on standby**.

My relief was obvious as I messaged back and then looked up at Bucky again. His slow eating belied how hungry he had looked earlier, but I appreciated that he wasn't just tearing into everything which reinstated my thought that he wasn't just a normal tramp. It took a bit longer to finish the food, but he hadn't touched the coffee. Shrugging, I picked the cup up and downed half of it in one sip. Now that we were out of the public eye, and I had fed him, the time seemed right to answer a few questions and a few insane theories.

Unsure exactly how to start, my first question was just a gentle probe, "So, what's your name?"

His gaze went far past me, and one word escaped from his lips, "Bucky." He looked away, and when he looked back, his face had hardened again, "Or the Asset."

I was shocked by the confirmation of my wildest hopes, but the second thing he said shocked me even more. Needing to disprove my new suspicion but very afraid that it would instead be proven, I slid my phone out and under the table typed a new message. **Why was this dangerous?** As a second thought, I typed out **Other than hanging out with a middle-aged male tramp.** I glanced up and Bucky wasn't paying much attention to me. The phone buzzed and a new message popped up, **Database suggests many similarities to the Winter Soldier.** My mind exploded at this evidence that my suspicious was correct. _But he can't be the Winter Soldier. If he's the Winter Soldier, why am I not dead? But he's not, he's Bucky. Wait, Bucky is the Winter Soldier? That makes so much sense. But… that's crazy._ My hand involuntarily rubbed my wrist where the bruise from Bucky's hand throbbed forcefully. I finally decided to ignore every single negative thought that was swarming in my brain and focus on the positive, if Bucky Barnes had something to do with Hydra, then that would give logical explanations for how he could still be alive.

He was glaring at me thoughtfully and then said something slightly unexpected, "I don't know you."

"Uh, no, we've never met before," I stuttered. I paused and then added, "I'm, uh, Cassie."

"How do you know me?"

"Well I wasn't sure it was you at first, it was kind of just an insane feeling. Like, 'that's Bucky Barnes' kind of thing. But apparently it was pretty accurate, right?"

"No," he shook his head slightly, never breaking eye contact, "how do you know who Bucky is?"

"Well, just about everybody knows about James Buchanan Barnes, World War II hero. You literally have a giant monument in the Smithsonian." I realized he must not have seen it, and an idea hit me. I slid out of the booth and stood up. "You want to go see it? It's pretty cool." He didn't seem to acknowledge my words, but he did stand up across from me. I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and dropped it on the table. "Keep the change," I yelled to the man who I assumed was somewhere in the back. Then I walked confidently out the door, waiting for him to follow. I knew it would be less attention drawing if we were walking together, so I stuck as close to his side as I could while still showing him where to go, and striving to not touch him.

Outside the museum, I decided that it would be better if I didn't go with him, so I gave him brief instructions for how to find the display that I had visited many times by myself.

He started walking up the stairs, and as a very last thought, I ran up behind him and whispered, "You might need to find a way around the metal detectors at the door."

I watched as he walked straight into the front door, not looking back. Someone bumped into me and I almost fell down the stairs. They didn't apologize so I didn't really feel like I needed too. I did, however, get off the stairs and found a bench where I could watch the doors and wait for him to come out.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Bucky spent a lot of time in the Smithsonian. I swung my hair behind my shoulder, leaned back on the bench and started working out the details in my theory about Bucky. The Winter Soldier was one of the top assassins in the world which was solidified by the fact that almost nobody knew about him. Given that his crimes had spanned over eighty years, it was reasonable to assume that it was just a succession of assassins taking the mantle when the previous one had wanted out. But if what I thought was true and this man was, in fact, Bucky Barnes, then that would change everything and give proof that it has been just one man all along. Not to mention the plain fact that the only way Bucky Barnes could be alive as a young man is if he had been helped by someone with technology at least as good as S.H.E.I.L.D.'s. I think that's the only reason that I just accepted that he was the Winter Soldier- because I desperately wanted to believe that it was possible for him to be alive.

Thirty minutes passed, broken only by periodic texts telling me that I needed to move on, not to stay in one place for too long, and other warnings that were absolutely correct but that I ignored anyway. When forty minutes had gone by, I stood up and glanced at the door that Bucky had gone through, then shook my head. Turning, I walked away. Five miles, eighteen right turns, fourteen left turns, and one wrong turn later, I arrived in one of the shabbiest parts of town. Old apartments and tiny houses crowded together. Laundry hung out on broken porch railings, and very much used toy cars lay strewn across the yards. In between one of the larger apartment buildings and one of the junkier houses was a little house with chipped and faded green paint and a once white railing leaning lopsided off of the porch.

I trudged up the stairs and unlocked the door. The smell of cigarettes and beer assaulted my senses as the door swung open, and I stepped into the tiny, barren living room. The only furniture was two moth-eaten, faded couches. I took a deep breath of fresh air from outside and then gingerly walked over the faded, ragged carpet to the door under the staircase that went to the tiny attic. I knocked on the door and heard a tiny beep.

"Alfred, I'm going to the basement," I said then tried the door handle. It was locked. I repeated my words but nothing happened. "Let me in," I said, shaking the door knob with every word. I sighed and tried to release my frustration, "Look, I know you're mad at me for putting myself at risk, okay? I didn't realize what I was getting into, but if you don't let me in, I'm going to go back and search for him, and that'll be really dangerous." When the door still didn't unlock, I resigned myself to having to make a full apology before I could get in, but still wanting to delay it for as long as possible, I turned to go check what supplies were in the kitchen. My heart jumped in my throat and I stifled a gasp. Bucky stood there in the middle of the room, his eyes shifting slowly around the room.

"How-how did you get here?" I asked, trying to slow my heart down.

"I followed you," he said, a slight sarcasm to the words.

I wondered why he hadn't just come with me, but he didn't seem to be in the mood for questions, so I just turned back to the door and emphasizing every word, I said, "I don't know why you're being stubborn, but if you don't open up right now, I will assume that you have been destroyed and I will run out into the streets screaming bloody murder until the police show up." Finally, I heard a small click and I opened the door. Instead of storage space, there was a set of stairs going down to the basement. I turned towards Bucky and waved him over.

"Come on, it's better downstairs." I stepped onto the staircase and waited for him to follow. He hesitated at the doorway, then stepped down. I closed the door behind him, leaving us in total darkness.

"Lights on, please" The lights lining the ceiling started coming on one by one, showing the rickety wooden stairs and cobwebs. I pushed past Bucky and hopped down the stairs, happy to be back. The stairs led onto a dirt floor which extended for about five feet and then was suddenly interrupted by smooth concrete. Hidden fluorescent lights softly glowed showing rugs and sofas neatly arranged around a large transparent screen. Colorful Christmas lights hung on the trim around the ceiling. The lights went around the floor trim too, and around the three doors on different sides of the room. I turned to Bucky who was looking around, interested but not surprised.

"This is my living room. I hope you don't mind Christmas lights in the middle of summer; they help me relax. You don't have to worry about anything, this place is pretty much the safest place on earth. Right, Alfred?"

The computer voice came through speakers on the wall, "It was until you brought the world's number one assassin in." Bucky looked perturbed about the bodiless voice.

"Shut up, Alfred. Sorry, that was just my computer. I named him Alfred like Batman's butler. I know it's not very creative, but I love making references to my fandoms anytime I can."

"Who's Batman?"

"You don't know who Batman is? I'm pretty sure he was popular even back in your day. Where have you even been?" He just stared darkly at me, so I decided it would probably be best to just explain it. "Batman is a really famous fictional superhero. He's got the whole billionaire playboy thing going on, but then at night, he puts on a costume that's styled like a bat and goes to fight crime. It's really cheesy, but all comic book superheroes are." Mentally I made an exception for the comic books about Captain America and Bucky. I watched Bucky walk slowly around the room. In the silence that followed, I remembered that only a few hours ago, this man could barely stand and I realized that he's either gotten better at hiding pain, or he must actually be better.

I decided that it was better safe than sorry and offered, "We have an X-ray machine if you want to get your ribs and arm checked." He shook his head and continued walking, examining the lights and the speakers that were systematically placed throughout the room. Shrugging, I dropped onto the sofa and curled my legs under me. Then and only then did a thought strike me which should have struck me a long time ago.

"I have to tell Steve that you're alive," the words pushed out of my mouth at the same time that they occurred to my brain.

He looked over questioningly, "Who's Steve?"

I thought he must be joking so I played along, "You know, the great and powerful and virtuous Captain America."

He tensed, every muscle rigid and teeth gritted he said, "You're not going to tell Captain America where I am. I don't want to be found by him." He stepped towards me threateningly.

Still unsure if he was playing some kind of game, I put my hands out to placate him and said, "Okay, okay, chill. I won't tell anybody. I wasn't gonna tell them where you were anyway. I'm not gonna give away my secret hideout just so Cap can see his best friend again. I just wanted to let him know that you were okay. That's not a problem, is it?" Suddenly he was in my face, his hand was on my shoulder, the metal fingers digging furrows into my collar bone.

His foul breath overrode the clean air, filling my lungs as he leaned in to hiss, "You will not send any type of message whatsoever to anyone about me. No one is to know that I exist. Do you understand?" He glared at me, not noticing that the Christmas lights were now pulsating gently.

"Yes, okay. I understand. Now let go of me before—" Bucky flew back against the chair opposite us and the burly man who had flung him dropped a huge punch right at his face. "NO!" The sound of my voice surprised me, but no one else in the room noticed me. The attacker's fist was millimeters away from Bucky's face when it was suddenly stopped. Somehow, Bucky had caught his fist with his metal arm. His whole upper-body went into the effort of twisting the giant man's arm around, and at the same time, he kicked the man's legs out from under him. I was halfway across the room when Bucky pulled out a pistol from who knows where and aimed it at the man on the ground. The man twisted to the side and tried to trip Bucky, but Bucky was too quick. A few seconds later, the man had a broken nose from Bucky's foot and was staring down the barrel of a loaded pistol. Bucky's finger moved on the trigger.

"NO!" I flung out my arms, and by an invisible force, Bucky and the man were both flung against separate walls. Bucky's pistol fired as it flew out of his hand, shattering the light above my head. Bucky had his teeth gritted in pain but tried to get up. "Stay down." He was pushed back by the invisible force again. I turned to the large man who was starting to get up, "Now look what you've done, Paul. Don't go near him." I added as he took a step towards Bucky.

"What I've done?" He spluttered, "He's a freaking assassin, and you brought him into the one safe place you have where he started attacking you. And you're upset with me because I did my job and tried to protect you?" He seethed with anger.

I was quick to back down, trying to avoid a fight. "I'm sorry, Paul. You did what you were supposed to. Although I have to say, you're rather slipping, I mean, it was me who had to save you." I should have resisted the urge to add the last bit because it set him off like he hadn't heard my apology.

"That's it. I risk my life daily to protect you and you tell me I don't do it well enough. I sit down to enjoy a cup of coffee, and your computer puts me on alert because there is a Russian assassin in the house. That stupid piece of equipment wouldn't let me in until it decided that you were in immediate danger—after that creep starts attacking you. Let me tell you, what you need is a good dose of respect for your life and the lives of others."

Noticing that the lights were still blinking slowly, I told Alfred, "Alarm off," and then turned back to Paul. "Alright, alright, I really am sorry. I didn't mean it. I really do appreciate it, honestly. It's just that you were so close to dying and then where would I have been? And you did kind of force me to do my thing."

Once again, he acted like he hadn't heard me, "How can you bring him in here of all people? Do you not care about your parents at all? You have no respect." My fists clenched and my heart pounded in fury. Trying to calm my anger before I spoke, I turned my head and stared fiercely at the wall. Something attracted my eye and I looked down to see Bucky inching towards his gun which had been flung a few yards away from him.

Frustrated, I waved my hand and the pistol flew across the room. "Get up," I commanded. Our eyes met and battled, but I was furious and he looked away first, wincing as he carefully got on his feet. Some of my anger subsided as I saw his pain and realized that I must have reinjured him when I flung him against the wall. "Maybe you should sit down," I offered apologetically. He looked thoughtfully at the sofa then lunged at me. Paul jerked forward to intercept him, but I held him back and flung Bucky into the sofa with the other hand. Mentally berating myself for hurting him again I said, "You're gonna have to explain a lot of things because I'm incredibly confused, but keep in mind that I do have the ability to push you around without even touching you. It's called a superpower and I will use it if I have to. Paul, thanks a lot for coming, but you'd better go now."

"I am not leaving you alone with the assassin tha—"

"I don't think he wants to hurt me," I interrupted, trying to steer the conversation away but Paul grabbed it back, "Why do you assume that he isn't on a mission? What makes you think that you are safe in the slightest? This is the Winter Soldier we are talking about. Where did your brain go?"

"I have really good reasons, I'll explain, just not now." I gave him my most pleading look, "Please. I'm on my guard, I can protect myself, and you'll be close by if I need you."

He worked his jaw a couple of times and then relented, "Only because there is a two percent chance that this is just a random street urchin," he said as he stalked out of the room. Bucky hadn't moved while we were talking except to sit at the edge of the couch, probably ready to move at any time. I turned towards him and then plopped down cross-legged a few feet in front of him. "So, I have a lot of questions, and I need you to help me out." He was glowering off into the distance. "You're the Winter Soldier, a Hydra assassin, but you're also James Barnes, a U.S. war hero from World War II. So those two facts bring up two questions, first, how are you still alive and young, although I think I can answer that one. And the second is how on earth did Hydra convince you to work for them?" I paused, but he didn't say anything, didn't move, so I went on. "The answer to the first one is pretty obvious, you got some form of the super soldier serum when you were captured. The serum is why you heal so quickly, am I right?" Still no response. I leaned forward and said, "But the real question is why? How could you ever choose to become an assassin for Hydra?" I assumed that he had an answer, a reason, a well-rehearsed line justifying his actions, but instead all I got was silence. Emotion flowed on Bucky's face that I couldn't even begin to interpret. For three or four minutes I sat there staring at my feet and thinking. I looked up, and Bucky's eyes moved to meet mine.

"I don't remember." The words came out slowly and purposefully.

I creased my brow, "You don't remember why you joined?" His eyes were sending messages as though he were willing me to understand and suddenly a memory from a few hours ago popped into my head. We were sitting at the restaurant table and he asked me how I knew who Bucky was. I assumed at the time that he somehow had just missed the fact that he was famous, but realization dawned that it went much deeper than that. He didn't know who Bucky was. He didn't remember. He didn't remember anything. They had taken his memories.  
They had brainwashed him.

Completely speechless I looked up to Bucky for some acknowledgment, some confirming of the statement but realized that it hadn't been said out loud. He was staring at the carpet, his jaw working silently. Gently rocking forward, I used the momentum to help me get up. I stared at him for a few seconds and then walked through one of the three doors in the room.

The room I walked into sharply contrasted the room I had just left. Where that one had light blue walls and Christmas lights, the walls could barely be seen in this room under loads of monitors hanging on the walls and sitting on the desk that was pushed up against one of the walls. The monitors were all off except for three: one playing the latest news, one flipping rapidly through different security camera footage, and one very small one that displayed a slideshow of pictures. There were a few pictures of me as a baby, but most of the pictures were of my parents.

My parents died eight years ago. I was just a kid, and they kind of died because of me. That was pretty life changing. As well as emotionally scarring. I still have nightmares about that day. But I've pretty much gotten over it. Pretty much.

"So, Alfie, what's the latest news?"

"Captain America was officially released from the hospital a few hours ago. He's been seen out and about with Sam Wilson."

"The guy with the wings that was helping Cap earlier?"

"Correct. The other news is that Tony Stark flew in for Director Fury's funeral which is scheduled two days from now at 3:30."

"Stark is here?" An idea sprang into my head. "Where is he staying?"

"He is staying at the Jefferson Hotel. Bought out a few floors as a matter of fact."

"But can you figure out exactly what room he is in?"

"That shouldn't be a problem."

"Awesome." I glanced at the door that went back to the living room and then asked Alfred, "Can you show me what Bucky's doing, please?" One of the monitors to my left came on and showed him still on the sofa, muscles tense. I weighed my options and then stood up and walked back into the room. He was already looking at me as I opened the door. Stepping into the living room and leaving the door open behind me, I said softly, "I don't remember if I introduced myself or not. My name is Cassie Jungwirth, and I think I can help you get your memories back."

"How?" There was disbelief in the words but also maybe a slight tinge of hope.

I smirked a bit and beckoned to him, "Come here."

He was slow to react to my words, but I could tell he was coming, and I turned around and went back up to the computer, sitting down. Without looking around, I pointed at the other chair in the room and heard the wheels squeaking as he rolled it a bit closer and sat down. I was planning to show Bucky about Tony and get him to agree to let me try to get Tony to help, but my mind got sidetracked and I typed a few things into a search bar and hit enter. Immediately the computer started flipping through options until the screen went blank, displaying a tiny red 'x' in the center with the word "denied" under it.

"What does it mean 'denied'?" This had never happened before.

"I'm afraid Hydra's database is unavailable"

"What does that even mean? I mean, if it wasn't accessible through the internet, that would be one thing, but this doesn't say 'no results', it says 'denied'. If it can be accessed through the internet, then you can get me in."

"Are those your parents?" The question was completely unexpected and I jerked around to look at Bucky. He was staring at the screen with the slideshow of pictures, apparently oblivious to anything I was doing with Alfred.

"Yeah, they died eight years ago," I immediately regretted the words and turned back to Alfred, "So, are you going to explain why I can't get the info I asked for?"

"It's not easy to explain. May I suggest that you click on the 'x'? They can explain it better than I can."

"Not another one of those. Please tell me this isn't another guilt trip from my parents to keep me out of trouble." Alfred was silent and, knowing what was coming, I sighed and clicked the mouse. Sure enough, a video filled the screen, displaying my parents sitting together on a sofa staring into the camera. There was an awkward pause as they obviously weren't sure whether the camera was on or not.

Taking the opportunity to analyze the video, I estimated that this one must have been made when I was five years old. I also decided that I definitely looked more like my dad in this video with the lighting emphasizing his deep-set blue eyes, framed by dark blond hair and a round face. My mom had blonde hair too, but it was a fake blond with garish crimson red highlights and dark roots showing. Her sharp facial bones and a load of makeup definitely ruled out any similarity to me. The awkward silence ended when my mom took a breath and rasped out with a voice ruined by too many cigarettes, "Hello, Cassie. We love you and hope you're safe. You're probably wondering why we've restricted access to this information." My dad spoke up, "If you're old enough to want any information you could get here, you're certainly old enough to figure out why it is a horrible idea. Anybody who accesses this information can be traced. So stay away and find something better to do with your life than melting your brain on the computer." Mom's smile looked even more forced than normal as she finished the video off with, "Please be safe—" "And always listen to common sense," my dad interrupted. Mom's pretense at a smile dropped completely as she turned towards him, glaring, and then the video cut off.

I leaned back into my chair. My eyes were watering, but it must have been because I had forgotten to blink and it certainly had nothing to do with the tightness in my chest. I allowed myself two seconds to breathe before I got back to what I had been planning to do in the first place. I glanced over at Bucky to make sure he was paying attention and saw the empty chair where he had been a few minutes ago.

"Where did he go?"

"Currently about a block away."

"He left the house?" I jumped out of my chair, "I have to find him." Reaching for a small basket on the side of the desk, I grabbed a small earpiece out of the stack and shoved it into my ear. "You'll have to tell me where to go." I puffed as I sprinted up the stairs. I forgot to slow down and hit the front door full on. Brushing myself off, I opened the door and slouched out. I walked down to the sidewalk while pulling my hair into a ponytail and then, after glancing around and making a show of stretching out a bit, I casually started jogging.

"Alright, where do I go and how fast do I have to go to catch up?" I breathed.

"Turn right. He is currently at a medium walk and you should catch up in three to four minutes." But four minutes later, he still wasn't in sight. At Alfred's suggestion, I stopped in an alley between two apartment buildings and panted out, "Where is he?"

"Do you not have visual?"

"What?" I spluttered. "No, he's nowhere around." There was a pause and then Alfred replied, "My sensors say that you are in the same general area. He must have heard you coming and hidden."

'But why is he hiding?' is the question that I really wanted to be answered. Brow furrowed, I looked around and started walking towards potential hiding spots. I heard a sharp crack and spun around to see Bucky sprinting away. My natural instinct to run after him took over, but three seconds in, I could tell that I was never gonna get close to him. While slowing myself down, I forcefully pushed my hands together. There was a thud and Bucky stumbled back, almost falling to the ground. It was like he had hit a wall, which in fact, he had. A wall of air. That's my superpower, I can manipulate molecules. Specifically air molecules.

I held him in place as I walked over, trying to stretch out a stitch that had developed in my side during my four-second sprint. "What's going on? I mean, I suppose you have a right to do whatever you want, but I'd really appreciate an explanation before you just disappear."

His eyes were wide and his teeth gritted as he tried to pull out of my hold. "Let go," he spat.

"Not until you tell me what's wrong. You're wearing three hundred dollars' worth of clothes that belong to me, that should be excuse enough for detaining you." I was trying to rationalize my actions. Trying to rationalize holding a full-grown man against his will with no real reason.

"I'll give you the clothes. Just let me go." We were both sweating now, him from trying to get away, and me from the effort of holding him. A pain shot up my back into my head, and I knew I should just let him go. Tightening my hold on the air molecules holding him down, I hissed, "Tell me why you're leaving." He gave one more giant tug and failing to get away, he stared directly into my eyes and breathed, "Because I killed your parents."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

My hold on him snapped, and I stumbled back a few steps. Black flooded my eyesight, and my stomach squeezed ever tighter. Closing my eyes and pressing my hands hard to my temples helped to slow down the spinning in my head, and I looked up at the man who murdered my family. While taking deep breaths to slow my heart down, I asked, "How do you know?" He stared blankly at me. My confusion definitely beat his as I was forced to rethink everything I thought I had figured out. "I thought you had been brainwashed. How could you possibly remember killing my parents?"

"I was, but I remember. Because of the pictures. I recognized them."

"Okay, so you have visual triggers that override whatever they did to your memory. So it's actually possible that you'll fully recover on your own with no treatment."

"I killed your parents," he looked confused and must have thought that I hadn't heard him properly.

"I know." I started to say more, but my voice caught as I remembered the screams I had heard the night that they died, and I had to take a second to shake it off. "I already knew. Well, I knew that the Winter Soldier was the assassin sent to kill them. I just didn't know who the Winter Soldier was until a few hours ago." I smiled at him to counteract the emotion that was threatening to turn into unwanted tears. He spun around and started walking away. With no legitimate reason, I followed him. Trying to keep up with his long strides, I said, "I know you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but I really would like to help if you'll let me." He jerked around to face me, eyes blazing, "What is wrong with you? Why does it not bother you that I shot your parents in the head?"

"Because…. Because…." I was scrambling for words to articulate my feeling but had to admit, "I don't know. Paul thinks I'm insane. Stupid is probably a better word, but it just seems different somehow. I mean, you're not planning to kill me, right? It's always been Hydra that killed my parents even more so since it turns out that the Winter Soldier was just a tool who had no idea what he was doing." He was still standing there, so I went on, "You can leave if you want to, but don't leave because of that. If you'll let me, I really want to help you as much as I can."

.

.

.

* * *

He rang the doorbell and stepped back. The sun glinted off of his right shoulder where he wore a small name tag that simply stated "Jack". Shifting the boxes in his arms and sighing impatiently, he pressed and held the doorbell until the door flew open and a tattooed man in a tank top stood in the doorway, glaring fiercely.

"I have the pizza you ordered," said Jack the pizza delivery guy, a little taken aback by the intimidating posture his customer had taken. The man grunted and reached out for the boxes, but Jack pulled back just a bit, hesitating. "That'll be twelve dollars and forty-two cents." The man reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Without breaking eye contact, he pulled out a twenty dollar bill and handed it to Jack. Jack grabbed it and handed over the pizzas. Feeling that he was in a bad neighborhood and his customer wasn't the friendly type, Jack turned and walked quickly over to his car. He almost jumped when a voice behind him growled out, "Hey, punk." Fighting his instinct to jump in the car and speed away, he turned around to face the man who had come out onto the porch a bit, still holding the pizza boxes.

"I want my change."

Internally kicking himself for assuming that anyone in this kind of neighborhood would tip him, he scrambled back up the sidewalk and counted out the change. His hands shaking, he handed it over and started to hurry back to his car, knowing that the man was probably counting the change and if he had made a mistake, there was a high chance of getting mugged. Despite his desire to get in his car and get away as quickly as possible, he couldn't resist glancing back to make sure he wasn't about to get shot. But the door was closed and nobody was in sight. Jack got in his car and went to deliver the rest of his pizza.

* * *

.

.

.

Paul clunked down the stairs and dropped two pizzas on the table in front of me, muttering something about idiot delivery boys. "Thanks, Paul," I smiled at him, pulling off my headphones and reaching to open one of the boxes to get a piece. Taking a bite, I turned back to the notebook I had been writing in and absently continued doodling all over the page. A tingling feeling told me I was being watched, and sure enough, when I looked up, Paul was still standing right in front of me, arms crossed. I glanced longingly at the headphones on the table from which I could still hear the faint sounds of heavy metal music before sighing and slumping down in my chair, "Alright, what is it?"

"You said you would explain, so start explaining."

I honestly had no idea what he was talking about, "Explain what?"

He gestured at the couch where Bucky was half slumped over, completely asleep. "Explain that. Explain why you could ever be even one percent safe with the Winter Soldier in your house. Explain why you're putting everything that we've worked so hard to set up at risk. It's almost like some sick joke. The Winter Soldier. How can you be seriously not worried at all about him being here?"

"Paul, if he was going to kill me, I would be dead. Obviously, I didn't know that he was the freaking Winter Soldier, but by the time I found out, it was pretty obvious he wasn't on a mission to kill me."

"Maybe not to kill you, but maybe to get into your base and destroy your security systems so that they could get in to you. Maybe they know how much of a geek you are about him and sent him in knowing that he was the only one who you might actually trust."

"That's ridiculous. For one thing, how could they ever know that?"

"Maybe from all the stupid comic books you've been buying from all over the country. That could draw some attention."

I sat up straight, "Excuse you. My comic book collection is a masterpiece of wondrous beauty. Besides, that's still a stupid idea. Look, the thing is, the Winter Soldier worked for Hydra, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, well, Hydra isn't around anymore to give him missions." At Paul's look of disbelief, I had to explain, "You know? Remember the fall of SHIELD? It happened like two days ago, I guess you were pretty young then, but you should still remember." Anger flared in his face at my mocking tone, so I backed off of it and in a more normal tone continued, "Well, maybe you missed it, but Hydra was infesting SHIELD. In fact, they pretty much were SHIELD. So when SHIELD fell, Hydra fell too. Since it's gone, the Winter Soldier is on his own. Nobody to give him orders. But beyond that, he's not just any assassin, he was brainwashed. Nothing he did was of his free will. He had no idea what he was doing. But now he's starting to get his memories back. He's starting to remember. And he is Bucky Barnes, I'm absolutely certain of it. How can I not help him? No matter what he did when he was under mind control."

Paul seemed to want to fight about it, but settled with grabbing one of the boxes of pizza and stalking off to his security room throwing behind him, "Sure, what do I know? I'm just a professional bodyguard trained to protect you. I don't know anything about keeping you safe…." He was still talking as the door shut behind him and the beautiful melody of banging drums and screaming singers drowned out the rest of his words as I slipped the headphones back on and finished my slice of pizza.

The page in my notebook was steadily filling up with mindless scribbles getting darker and darker until the lead in the pencil snapped. In my frustration, I pushed the pencil into the table until the pencil snapped too. My mp3 player chose that time to run out of battery and I flung it across the room, regretting it immediately and creating an air cushion to catch it before it hit the wall. My eyes were getting heavy and my brain felt like it was slogging through swamps for every thought. Slapping myself hard on the cheek did nothing to brighten my senses, and I started considering going to bed. The clock on the wall displayed 11:37 A.M. as the current time. That made it approximately twenty-five hours since I had first run into Bucky and about twenty-nine hours since I had last slept. I regretted not going to sleep last night, but it hadn't really seemed an option with the way my brain was running overtime trying to figure out the best way to help Bucky and the best way to get him to let me do what I needed to do. Despite many thoughts and ideas swirling around in my mind, I still had no game plan. With a jolt, I realized that I had almost fallen asleep right there on the table and resolutely turned to go to bed.

Bucky was now straight up on the couch, wide awake. He determinately had stayed awake most of the night, uncomfortable and untrusting of the surroundings, but he conked out about five hours ago, unable to force himself awake any longer. Despite probably having a lesser total of sleep than me, he was alert and watchful, particularly watching the pizza. Realizing that I was drifting off again while staring at him, I pushed myself out of the chair and started walking slowly towards my room. I pointed at the box of almost uneaten pizza, "You can eat as much of that as you want, and if you get bored, you're welcome to use the TV," I gestured to the large screen in the middle of the room. "Alfred can show you how to use it. I'm going to bed. Please don't do anything rash or stupid while I'm gone." It took a total of ten seconds to fall asleep when I hit the pillow.

.

* * *

"Come on. Eat it. No, don't spit it out, you silly baby." The words floated through the walls accompanied by giggles and the sounds of a baby spitting and laughing. I jerked up in bed confused and disoriented. Yanking back the covers, I ran on tiptoes to the partially open door and pulled it back. The back of Bucky's head partially blocked the TV which was on and displaying a video of a baby in a high chair, being fed applesauce. The video shook as the woman behind the camera giggled and zoomed in on the food dribbling down the baby's chin. I suddenly felt sick. My shoulder pressed against the doorframe as I slid heavily down to the ground. It had been years since I had seen this video. The dad in the video scooped the food off of the baby's chin and stuck it back into her mouth.

"Come on, Cassie. You have to eat your food," he said, pretending to be stern, but a smile broke through the façade as I… Cassie… the baby stuck out her tongue and clapped her hands, spilling drool filled applesauce everywhere. The video went black, spritzed with static, and then switched scenes. For the next twenty minutes, the video went through short clips of my life: my first step, my first word, my second birthday, Christmas, and random little videos of my dad or my mom cooking in the kitchen while I followed them around. The whole time that the video was going, Bucky sat on the couch unmoving, watching the whole thing. I was watching it too—sometimes smiling to myself—most of the time angrily glaring at the screen anytime my parents showed up.

Then finally, the video turned to a view of a park, the grass lush and thick around the playground with numerous trees glowing a brilliant green. The focus was on a large slide near the edge of the playground. Three-year-old me had climbed up to the top of the ladder, about twenty feet high. My mom was behind the camera and my dad was right behind me on the ladder, nervously jerking with every move I made, determined to make sure I didn't fall. I stepped on the top of the slide and started to sit down, but my foot slipped. My dad cursed and my mom screamed as I fell head first off of the slide. The camera jerked as Mom started towards me and it was impossible to see what had happened, but the microphone in the camera picked up my laughter and my dad clearly said "Oh my ***". After that, it was incredibly hard to hear, but the subtitles that I had manually put in showed up on the screen.

"There's no way. This can't be real."

"Maybe there's another explanation—something else."

"What else could it possibly be?"

But our daughter is normal. Completely normal. You know what will—" At that point, they obviously remember the video camera because it is quickly shut off. There were a few more short videos, some clips of our first visit to DC and one or two more birthdays. I still laughed and giggled most of the time, but my parents appeared stressed and tired. At last, the video stopped and the TV went blank. I didn't feel like I was crying, but a small puddle of saltwater had soaked through my shirt anyway.

"What happened?" The words came from Bucky, still gazing at the now blank TV. A deep breath made sure my voice was steady before I started to explain, "I broke my fall. It wasn't purposeful. I was only four, I didn't know how to control my powers. I didn't even know I had any. It was just an automatic response to save myself." I cut the explanation off as my voice involuntarily started trembling and the pressure at the back of my throat increased. "I don't understand," he said, suddenly sitting on the floor in front of me. "Why did they get so upset? Is it that bad?"

"Well, it was really scary for them because Dad was a SHIELD employee: level four clearance, working in weapon development. He mostly worked on the smaller weapons and gadgets: things to make the agent's lives easier. But there were rumors floating around about a very secret project being conducted by another department in weapon development. People were saying that experiments were being conducted on humans—presumably humans with extraordinary powers. My dad heard terrible things about what was happening to people in the SHIELD laboratories. Most of it was exaggerated or made up, but Dad told Mom about some of it anyway. So when they found out about me, they instantly got paranoid about what could happen. Dad quit his job and we moved to the country. Turns out they were right to be upset. Somehow Hydra found out about me and soon we had both SHIELD and Hydra hunting us down. I don't know how Dad stayed ahead of them, but he moved us to a safe house and we stayed there for three years. My dad experimented the whole time—desperately hoping that there was some way to remove my powers. I think he was close, but he never got the chance to complete his project because…. Well, he didn't really live long enough." I glanced uncomfortably at the floor and continued, "So anyway, after that, Paul brought me here and I've been here ever since. No troubles at all." By the end of the explanation, my voice was steady and no sign of my previous emotion was left.

Silence filled the room, and I remembered a thought that I should have remembered a long time ago: Tony Stark is in town, and he could help. Approaching the topic seemed a daunting task, especially as it would necessitate the breaking of the silence that had fallen. That same silence was what finally drove me to speak; the awkwardness was something I felt heavily. My voice squeaked as I started to speak, "So, if I knew somebody that could help you get your memory back, would you be interested in getting help?"

His body language expressed increasing defensiveness which I interpreted as a most definite probably not. Remembering the attack from last time, I was quick to add, "Nobody will have to know where you are or that you even exist. I can just go and talk with him and see if he can help." He didn't say anything. "It won't hurt anything, I promise. You don't mind if I just go and talk to him, do you?" He seemed hesitant but finally shook his head. "Great, I'll just do that sometime soon then." Pushing myself off of the ground and standing up, I asked "Alfred, do you know where Tony is?"

"He is not at the hotel. Shall I do a scan to locate his precise position?"

"No, that's fine, thanks. I am gonna need a lot of facts about the hotel and tabs on any living thing within a fifty-foot radius of the building."

"Working on that right now."

I thanked him and turned to Bucky who had stood up also, "While I'm thinking about it, is there anything that you want? We have food and drinks and toothbrushes, or just about anything else you might need." He shook his head again. "Okay, well if you need anything, we probably have it. I might be gone a few hours, just stay out of my room and you'll be fine." I walked into the computer room to look over the stats that Alfred was putting up. It was gonna take some careful planning, but I was going to go see Tony Stark, no matter what.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

He knew I was there before he opened the door. That was made pretty obvious when the lights flipped on and he walked right past me without even glancing around. I shifted back into my position on the sofa and wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. He seemed very preoccupied in taking off his shoes. Finally, he briefly glanced at me and said, "Get out."

"But you don't know why I'm here."

"Doesn't matter, get out."

This wasn't going how I hoped. "I need your help, and I think you might actually want to help with this."

He mockingly raised an eyebrow, "Oh really? Let me guess, you have the next great idea for an invention. It'll make billions. You just can't figure out how to get it to work. Am I right?" I almost laughed, his sarcasm was totally endearing. "No, not at all. Actually, I need you to make the next great invention to help a, umm, mental ailment that one of my friends has."

"I'm not a doctor and I don't help people. So get out of my hotel." An Iron man suit came from an adjoining room, fully assembled and walking with its hand in the air as if threatening to shoot. I was temporarily distracted, "Is that empty? I mean, is it a robot?"

He was obviously not about to stand for any more delay, and the suit seemed to be preparing to throw me out. I decided that I couldn't afford to waste any more time. "Look, I know you're friends with Captain America and if you help me then you'll be helping him too. His best friend is mentally ill and I don't know if you can help him, so if you can't that's fine, but if you can then you absolutely should."

"And just who exactly is Captain America's best friend?"

"Bucky Barnes, of course." He suddenly got really serious, "What do you know about Barnes?"

This wasn't quite the reaction I had planned for, "Well, I, uh, know him, kind of, and he has serious memory problems and I thought you might be able to help." "You're lying. You heard rumors and you're here to see if you could use them to get something off of me. Well a little bad news for you, it didn't work. Now get out." The robotic Iron man grabbed me and actually pulled me off of the sofa. "No, wait. I can show you. Let me show you." With the arm that wasn't being held, I scrambled around in my pocket to pull out my phone. The tinted green transparent screen lit up as I told it to bring up the video I wanted. I tapped it in the air and it projected the video into midair. It was just a short clip from my security cameras, showing Bucky sitting on the couch, but Stark was immediately interested. It wasn't the video, though, that he was staring at, but the phone in my hand.

"Let me see that." The sudden urge to completely get out of there, phone and all came over me. I had the distinct feeling that I shouldn't have shown him what kind of tech I had. Telling myself that I was doing it for Bucky, I handed him my phone. He flipped it around a few times and swiped around on the screen. He muttered something under his breath and then looked up. "Where did you get this?"

"I don't know, it's mine."

"No, it's most certainly mine." Panic rose. This was not somewhere I imagined this meeting going, and I was not prepared for anything like this. I swiped at my phone, "Give it back." He stepped back a few steps and the phone still rested in his hand as he gazed at me interestedly

"What are you doing? Look, the phone is mine. Maybe it's similar to your technology, but it's not like I stole it or anything. I've always had it, and it's mine and you'd better give it back." He was still looking at me bemusedly. I was getting really angry and kind of scared too.

"Does the name Brian Jungwirth mean anything to you?" He looked as if he were only mildly interested in the answer, but my mind was wildly interested in the question. How did he know that name? I knew that he worked with SHIELD, but surely he didn't know anything about their efforts to track me down. "That's my dad," I stuttered. Tony whistled, "So you're his kid. Never thought I'd see you. How is the old man, by the way? He was always a bit of a stick in the mud, but a good guy. I haven't seen him in... well, it must have been ten years." This was another unexpected turn and my confusion was rampant. "You knew my dad?"

"I gave him open access to my money and set him up with my technology and he doesn't even tell you that we know each other?"

"Your money... that's where the money comes from? It's yours? But why would you let us use your money?"

"Cause I like your dad and I don't like SHIELD. But the real question is why you're here. Where are your parents? Aren't you supposed to be hiding away somewhere?"

"My parents died ten years ago." That made him stop short.

"Both of them? Dead? How?"

"They were shot by an assassin sent by Hydra. I got away and I've been living in D.C. ever since." I gave him a moment to absorb the news and used it myself to absorb everything I had learned. Then I pushed back onto the reason that I was here, "I had no idea that you were funding my safe house, although I should have guessed that it wasn't just some hidden bank account of my dad's, but since apparently you've been helping me for the past ten years, maybe that will make you more likely believe me, Bucky Barnes is alive but he has severe memory loss. He can remember a few things vaguely, but he's having a lot of trouble and I thought that maybe you could make something to... I don't know, stimulate his memory and get him back into working order. If you can't help, then just say so and I'll get out of here."

"I didn't say that I couldn't help, but I'm having a hard time believing that you know where he is. Cap has been searching for days, and we've scanned every single available security camera footage and even the unavailable security footage in a one-hundred-mile radius. There's not a sign of him. How could you possibly know where he is when we can't find any trace of him?"

"Well, he was in the woods when I found him, so there wouldn't have been any security cameras there, and when we went into town, he was with me and I have this little program thing that blocks me from—"

"All videos and pictures," Tony finished. "Of course, I designed that myself."

"Yeah, besides, I think that if you had looked at my video, you would consider it to be pretty conclusive proof." He turned to the video that had been playing the same twenty-second clip on repeat for the last few minutes and looked at it like he hadn't even noticed that it was there before.

"That's definitely him. Although how you got through a meeting with that assassin and came out alive is a definite mystery."

"I don't think he's really very dangerous anymore. Okay, well, he's a bit erratic at times. And he did almost kill my bodyguard, but like, he doesn't exactly just go around killing people for the sake of killing. So yeah, anyway, I didn't really know what you would need if you were gonna help, so I just took a scan of his brain." I reached out for my phone and finally got it back from him. All it took was a few swipes and then another tap and a 3D detailed x-ray of a brain popped up. Tony looked at it and then started swiping around and zooming in.

"So you think you'll be able to do anything?" I asked after a few minutes. He looked up and seemed surprised that I was standing there like he had forgotten all about me, "Yeah, this shouldn't be any problem."

.

A few hours later, he had a fully functional electromagnetic stimulator set up, or something like that. "So you're sure this will work?" He stopped admiring his work and turned towards me, "My machines always work. It should only take up to a month of therapy sessions with this to see marked improvement."

"A month?" I was disappointed.

"What? You didn't think it was going to magically restore his memory, did you?" That's exactly what I had thought. "This isn't a miracle worker, it's just a therapy machine. It'll encourage extra brain activity and gently stimulate the areas of his brain that have been damaged and dormant. Of course, if I was back at my tower I could've whipped up something to regain his memory on the spot, but as it is, it's not easy to get the supplies I need in D.C."

"Well, I don't know how I'm gonna get the Winter Soldier to agree to a month of therapy, but miracles do happen. Could I bring him here tomorrow?"

"You want to bring him here? The man's a fugitive from the law."

"Well I'd love to take the electro-thingy with me, but I don't exactly see how that's going to work. You have any better ideas?"

"Yeah, I'll find a place that isn't being watched by every news reporter in a hundred mile radius."

"That does sound like a better idea," I admitted.

"I'll text you where to go later."

"Okay, that's cool. Oh, and one more thing, you can't tell Captain America about any of this."

"Oh really? Since when do you get to tell me what to do?"

"Please? If he knew, he wouldn't be able to stay away."

"So?"

"Bucky really seems to have very violent reactions to even the mention of Captain America's name. How do you think he'd react if he actually saw him?"

"That might be a fair point. I won't tell him… for now."

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.

.

It was late when I got back. The lights were dim as I walked down the steps leading into my home. The main room had been carefully designed to be as light and cheerful as possible. Since there couldn't be any windows, everything was made specifically to feel fresh and open. The Christmas lights were my idea to make everything more playful and had been added a few years ago.

The newest addition, though, was the dark, grim shadow in the corner of the room. He was bent over something, his long hair shading his set jaw. He was focused on the black object in his hand and didn't look up as I rushed to the table in the middle of the room and felt under the corner. Sure enough, the hidden holster was empty.

"Your weapons won't work if you don't keep them clean." He wasn't looking at me-he was still wiping off my pistol-the cartridge, and ammo laying on the floor beside him.

I walked a little closer so I could watch him a little better, "I didn't know that they got dirty if you weren't using them."

He spit a little on the barrel of the gun and wiped it again. "Dust," he said simply.

"Well, a little bit of dust isn't going to hurt it."

He looked up just a little at me, "Dust can build up to become dirt, and dirt can make it misfire and a misfire could mean that you end up dead." He stopped wiping the gun and it lay in his lap as his eyebrows furrowed and he stared into the distance. I glanced behind me and then asked, "What?"

"I... I've said that before," he said slowly as if each word was hard, "I was teaching... a lot of girls... about guns." I leaned forward eagerly, excited that he was remembering things. "It was in a red… room or… something." He stopped abruptly and started pushing the bullets back into the cartridge before jamming the cartridge back into the gun. He flipped it in his hand and offered it to me, handle first.

My fingers slid unfamiliarly over the handle. He let go, and I immediately let the point drop to the ground.

"Thanks," I muttered and walked across the room to reverently push it back into the holster. I stood there tracing circles into the top of the table, trying to decide how best to bring up the conversation that needed to be had. With half-formed thoughts on the tip of my tongue, I turned, ready to bring the subject up. I found Bucky in the same place he had been a moment ago, but now he was bent over a notebook, scratching something out in pencil. The notebook I recognized as being the one that I had been doodling in earlier and had left on the table.

His face was screwed up in concentration as he glared at the paper and wrote sporadically. The urge to find out what he was doing was dampened by the desire to not interrupt him. So I watched him. A few minutes later, he stopped writing and stared hard at the page, the pencil twitching in his hand. Sighing, he closed the notebook with a snap, tucked it carefully back into his pocket and asked the question with no ceremony, "Can he help?"

"I think so, yes. In fact, we already have a treatment all set up." Not wanting him to feel trapped, I added, "Of course, you don't have to use it if you don't want to. We just thought it would be better to have it set up in case you decided you wanted to."

Indecision showed in his eyes. His hand brushed seemingly subconsciously against his back pocket and his fingers brushed over the top of the notebook sticking out of the pocket. "When?"

"Tomorrow, if you want."

He nodded, "Tomorrow." He walked over and lay down on the sofa. Taking the hint, I moved into my room. The sight of my bed made me realize how tired I was again, and I quickly got ready for sleep. Lying in my bed and drifting off to sleep, my last thought was, 'I hope Stark can work it all out.'


	5. Chapter 5

Okay, guys. Sorry for the temporary depression. Here's the next chapter and I hope you like it.

* * *

Chapter 5

The text from Tony came at seven in the morning, no unnecessary words, just the GPS coordinates of the meeting location. That was all we needed. A quick search showed that the coordinates belonged to a building in a group of warehouses and storage sheds. Unfortunately, it was also a thirty-minute bus ride away.

We took just enough time to round up a few supplies and then headed out. The bus was completely full of morning commuters heading to their work and minimal standing room was left. I wasn't sure how Bucky would handle being squeezed in a bus with a bunch of other people, but my worries were unnecessary. In fact, his confidence and assertion added to his large physique, naturally gave us a little space as people crowded themselves a bit more to not get too close to him.

The bus jolted to a stop several times, picking up more people, and thankfully, dropping off people. Finally our stop came around. We squeezed and shuffled out and immediately started walking. The earpieces that we both had were crackling a bit as Alfred directed us down the street and farther into rural areas. We were on the last mile of the walk when he suddenly gave warning, "I'm detecting a large spike in the number of people around the building." I stopped, "Paparazzi for Tony?"

"At least two vehicles from the Washington DC Police have been dispatched to that area. There are many more that are currently unidentified; I would conjecture CIA or FBI."

"So it's an ambush?"

"Very probably. They seem to be adopting a circular pattern around the building."

I glanced at Bucky. "They're probably there for him, not me. Correct?"

"Possibly both of you. Any of those people could be linked to Hydra."

"Huh, well, the other question is, how do we get in?"

"You don't." Paul's voice blared through the speaker.

I winced, "Come on, man, not so loud."

"There is no way you get into that building without being caught. Stark is trying to lead you into a trap. You need to get out of there right now."

"Paul, come on. I know I can get in." I expected him to blow up, but instead, he drew a breath and begged, "Please, Cassie. There are other days, other places. If you go in there, it could be the end of your life as you know it. And they'll get your friend too. He has to be their main target anyway. He'll be arrested, and then he'll never have a chance to recover at all."

I knew he was right, but I still didn't want to give in. Then Bucky spoke up, "I'm not going in there."

"But…" I knew I had to give in. There was no way to fight this kind of resistance. But we were so close. I pulled my earpiece out and held it in my hand, muting the microphone, and stepped closer to him. "I can get you in without them even knowing we're there. I swear, nobody is gonna see us."

He shook his head, "What about Stark? Someone had to tip the police off, and you said nobody knew about it except for you and him."

I realized that he was right—who else could have known? But I couldn't think of a reason that he would do something like that. He's been spending countless resources to keep me away from the government, and he wouldn't throw that away by leading me right to them.

"I trust Stark. And if you would trust me, this could go off very smoothly. So what if a couple of government officials are surrounding a building? I can get you in and out before they even know what's going on." He shook his head firmly, "We can come back another day."

"Stark is leaving in another day." I was being stubborn and I knew it. But I had decided that I was going to get Bucky Barnes on the road to recovery, and I wasn't backing down. "You owe me one. You killed my parents, and all I'm asking for reparation is that you let me get you to a place that can help you." It was a low blow, and I knew it, but it effectually weakened his resistance.

.

.

.

Their uniforms were unmarked and solid black. They both carried M4 rifles, ammo, pistols—pretty much fully decked out. I ducked back behind the metal warehouse. Bucky furtively glanced around and huffed uncomfortably. I reached out and grabbed his hand, the glove only partially cushioned the metal. Our prearranged signal was a visual countdown which I started by holding up three fingers and mouthing the words. 3… 2… 1… We both jumped silently off the ground. The few inches of air under our feet became ten feet as I boosted us up and gently lowered us to the roof of the building. Crouching low, we moved to the other edge of the roof. This was where I started getting nervous. The first jump had taken much more exertion than I had expected and we had several more to make. Not only that, but if I made one wrong move, moved too slowly or too high or too low, we'd be spotted and everyone else would be proven right and I would be proven wrong. I really hate being proven wrong.

Luckily for me, there was a slight breeze which made my next move very natural. My eyes squinted in concentration for a moment and my efforts were rewarded with a muffled cry just a few feet away.

The grizzled whisper from one of the men was barely audible from where we were, "What's wrong?"

"There's something in my eye." The distraction wasn't going to last long. Our next jump had to be made immediately. Grabbing onto Bucky again I repeated the countdown and this time the jump was even smaller, even lighter. But the wind was even stronger this time, and we shot across the small space between buildings so fast that I barely had time to pull up before we hit the next roof. Flattening ourselves against the top, we crawled carefully to the edge again. It took a great deal of effort just to keep my panting quiet.

The last step was a complete gamble. The building that Stark had told us to meet him in was just ahead of us, but I knew the place was surrounded so that no matter where we came from or what I did, we would be spotted by someone. I also knew from personal experience that there was a certain frequency that Alfred could emit that sent a piercing wail through the earpieces that I used. So I was gambling my safety and Bucky's future on a hope that most or all of the men around the building had similar earpieces. Ten minutes ago, it had seemed like a risk I was willing to take, but now that I was actually here, the thought that I could be getting Bucky arrested just because I had decided to be stubborn was making me sick to my stomach.

Telling myself that it was too late to back out, I whispered into the earpiece that I held in my hand, "Do it now." Two seconds later muffled yells and scuffling in dirt cued my jerk forward, hanging on to Bucky. We didn't have enough velocity to get us all the way so I slammed the last of my energy into it. We hit the roof unpadded and unprotected at full speed. Bucky was up instantly and breaking open the door that was set in the roof. I couldn't move. He grabbed me and dragged me through the opening and dropped me to the floor. I cushioned my fall but only had enough energy to roll over face up and stare at the ceiling. He dropped down through the roof and pulled the door shut behind him.

"Well, that was dramatic."

My eyes were blurred over, and the whole room was spinning as I answered, "You're the one who blocked the normal entrance off with a bunch of government guys."

"Well that was an unexpected turnout, I don't know how they found out that he," Tony nodded towards Bucky, "was going to be here. But you shouldn't have come if you knew they were here."

"They didn't see us," I muttered. Bucky offered me his hand to pull me up, I stared at it, waiting for it to stop spinning around with the rest of the world, before grabbing it and letting him pull me up. I stumbled into him, and he propped me up.

"Are you okay?" He asked. I nodded, but that increased the dizziness and I found the nearest box to sit on.

"We'd better get going if you don't mind," I said in the general direction of Tony, "We gotta get out of here before those guys decide to come in and look for us."

Stark nodded and waved Bucky over to his machine. It wasn't very impressive looking, just a small chair and some kind of headband thing with a whole lot of wires connected to a box the size of a guitar amp. Bucky slowly walked over and sat down, his jaw tense, and guilt hit me as I realized that he's had to do this kind of thing before. Stark was giving Bucky a few instructions and fixing the band around his head. The room started fading to black. I laid down carefully on the box and closed my eyes. The spinning and the pounding in my head gradually ceased, and I lay there completely unconscious.

Four minutes and twenty seconds later, as Alfred so usefully informed me, I woke up, fully refreshed and ready to go. Then I saw Stark. He was ripping the gear off of Bucky and checking for a pulse at the same time. My heart rate hit the ceiling at about the same time I hit the floor and scrambled over to his side. "What happened?"

"Nothing. It was going great and then he decided to stop breathing."

"We have to get his heart going. Do something. CPR or something."

"Well, I'm not doing mouth-to-mouth."

I almost screamed in frustration. "I'll get him breathing, you get his heart going, alright? I'm sure you have something you can use as a defibrillator or something." I started pulling the old air out from his lungs and pushing new air in. Of course, anything I could do would be absolutely useless if his heart wasn't beating. Stark's hand was now covered in part of an Iron Man suit, and he placed it on Bucky's chest. Bucky's body jerked as Stark fired it into his chest three times. The third time, his eyes snapped open and he looked wildly around before sinking back into unconsciousness. He slid down on the floor and I made sure he didn't hit hard.

Stark seemed to have forgotten about him, and having discarded the glove, was fiddling around with his machine and muttering, "It didn't even get to full power, he should've been able to handle a lot more than that."

Bucky's eyes opened and he looked around and then at me, "Where am I? Who are you?" I rolled my eyes at Stark, "Great job. We've made regression." I turned back to Bucky, "I'm Cassie. This is Stark and he's helping you recover your memory. Theoretically." He pushed himself up to a sitting position. His face squinted in concentration, "What's my name?" Defeat loomed before me as I answered, "James Buchanan Barnes."

"Oh," his face relaxed, "right. Of course." Something indefinable had changed. Despite obviously still have memory issues, he wasn't the dark and brooding Winter Soldier anymore. There was some scuffling behind me. I jerked around to see Captain America himself, in casual clothes, staring at Bucky. Stark was right behind him. "Stark. Come on, man. We discussed this." Any argument was forestalled by a low moan behind me. Bucky had tensed up and was gripping his head, pushing hard and obviously in pain. Cap was at his side in an instant, concern etched in every muscle. The guys outside must have seen Cap come in because Paul squawked a warning in my ear. "They're moving in. You need to get out, now." I turned to Tony who was watching everything interestedly, but not doing anything to help anything. "Can you get him out of here without getting him caught?"

He nodded, "No problem."

"You're sure?" He made a face that clearly said that he was always sure. "Fine, then. He's your responsibility now. They're moving in, so you need to get him out quickly." Whatever was going on with Bucky seemed to be getting worse as his cries of pain got louder and he started banging his metal arm against his head. Turning away, I got back under the hatch to the roof. "Paul, I'm not sure that I can get out without being spotted."

"It doesn't matter, just get out of there as quickly as possible and get as far away as you can."

"Okey Dokey." I flipped the roof door open with one hand. I glanced back one more time to see Bucky writhing around on the floor. He jerked and hit his head on the corner of a box and went completely still. For just a second, I was going to check on him, see what was going on. But then Paul screamed in my ear to move, and without a second thought, I boosted myself onto the roof. As soon as my feet touched the roof, I was sprinting to the edge of the building. Without stopping, I jumped and hit myself in the back with a gust of wind that sent me flying away from the buildings. I hit the ground running and sprinted towards the road. With the help of the wind, I got out of sight of the buildings and away from the few people who had chased after me. I saw when they stopped running after me, but I didn't hear when one of the men leaned into his microphone and whispered, "We've found a powered one."

As soon as I felt I possibly could, I stopped. Stamina is not something that I have much of, and I was on the verge of blacking out again. I managed to stay conscious long enough to get back to the bus stop. A dark car was parked where the bus is supposed to stop and I had enough time to wonder whether it was allowed to be there before the door opened and Paul grabbed me before I hit the ground.

I woke up crying in the back seat of the car. Exhaustion numbed my senses and I didn't even try to justify or explain away the tears streaming down my face. The gravel crunched under our tires as we pulled into our driveway. The engine stopped and Paul slammed the car door behind him and strode into the house. My fingers could barely pull the door handle open, but I made it inside and stumbled down the stairs.

The lights warmly welcomed me back to my domain. My tears had stopped flowing because it took too much energy to cry. Wiping my nose on my hand, I slogged over to the wall and carefully set my hand inside a bright yellow circle that had been drawn on one of the panels. A small whirring sound was replaced by the sound of large gears turning as the wall separated into two pieces and started opening like a cabinet. On the inside of the moving walls, cheap posters were tacked up showing Captain America and Bucky. The wall completely moved back to show what it had been hiding, bookshelves and cubby holes. Thousands of mint condition comic books carefully packaged in their plastic sleeves filled the shelves along with several graphic novels, biographies, and some books full of conspiracy theories about various government organizations. In the cubby holes were posters far too valuable to stick up on the wall. There were tiny shelves for collector's cards, once again in mint condition, and even small spaces for action figures, all in their original packaging.

The plastic crackled as my fingers ran gently over the backs of the books. I carefully pulled out a comic book. It was the only comic book I had that wasn't mint condition and was the first comic book I'd ever gotten. I curled up on my sofa, my red puffy eyes pursued the comic book that I had read over thirty times.

The rough sound of Paul clearing his throat jolted me back from the magical land of Bucky and Captain America victoriously fighting side by side. He held out a small box to me, "Grab anything you want to take, I'll give you two minutes." I reached out and took the box, "What do you mean?"

"We're leaving, and we need to go quickly. If there's anything you want that can't be replaced, then grab it and let's go."

"What do you mean 'we're leaving'?"

"Your security is completely compromised as long as we stay here. There's another place we can go, but we need to move fast."

Comprehension dawned on me and simultaneously the realization that it didn't really matter anymore. "No. I don't care about my security anymore. There is no way that I'm leaving the only home I've ever known."

"It doesn't matter if you care about your security. Your parents died trying to keep you safe, you have to honor their dying act."

A snort escaped me. I was numb everywhere and tired of keeping my true thoughts to myself. "Uh-uh. No. Guilt tripping me is not gonna work this time. 'Your parents wanted this and this for you. Oh, and by the way, they died because of you.' I'm sick and tired of it. News flash: my parents were not exactly stellar parents, and I don't deserve to have their deaths thrown in my face every single day."

"Grow up, Cassie. You're trying to throw away all they did for you."

"All they did for me?" I wasn't sure whether to scream or to cry. "You mean like all those experiments?" I pushed up my sleeve to my shoulder. "Ask me where I got these scars, Paul. Yeah, from my dad drawing blood and sticking IVs into my arm hundreds of times like his little lab rat. I was four." I was screaming and crying at the same time. "And it was all because my parents couldn't accept who I am. So yeah, if I could throw that away, I would do it without a second thought. Unfortunately, some things like that are hard to get rid of." Hot tears limited my vision to a minimum. I stopped to take a sobbing racking breath. A sharp pain went up my arm, and the world started turning black for the third time that day. I felt a shockwave of energy leave me, and I fell to the floor, completely unconscious.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

James Buchanan Barnes woke up feeling like he'd slept for ages, and the first thing his eyes landed on was Steve Rogers. The new Steve Rogers, that is. It had been months since he had first seen the new and "improved" "Captain America", but he still occasionally forgot, or didn't recognize him at first glance.

"Steve?" his voice rasped some and he cleared his throat.

"Bucky." Steve's face released all the pressure that had built up there and broke into a smile. Suddenly, Bucky was gripped in a bone crushing hug through which he could feel Steve shaking gently as he released a few quiet tears. Bucky wasn't sure what had gotten Steve so emotional, but there was no time to ask. A man that Bucky hadn't noticed before was pulling them apart and warning them, his voice tinged with apathy, "You guys can kiss and make-up later. We need to get out of here before we're caught consorting with the criminal of the century." Steve pulled Bucky to his feet. A searing heat flashed through Bucky's head and a memory of their last mission popped up. They had been on the mission to get Zola when he had fallen off the train down into a ravine. He realized that he must have been seriously injured and Steve must have been pretty twisted up about it.

"Were you worried?" he smirked. The floor seemed to wobble under Bucky's legs and he almost collapsed. Steve grabbed him around the shoulders and supported him towards the door.

"It's good to have you back," Steve's voice was satisfied even though his face was concerned.

"Okay, you two." Tony swung open a side door revealing the open trunk of a truck. "Get in the truck, close the door, let my guy drive you out of here, and don't get caught."

Steve hesitated at the door, "Won't they follow us?"

"Don't worry about it. I've got a couple of distractions."

"Thank you, Tony. I really appreciate this."

"Yeah, well, it's just temporary. You'd better seriously start considering your options for legal defense. And they're gonna have to be one helluva defense attorney to get him out of this."

Steve's face darkened and he nodded before helping Bucky into the back of the truck and slamming the door shut.

It wasn't completely dark, light managed to break the gloom through small holes along the side of the truck, lighting it up enough to see glimpses of each other's face. The truck jolted, throwing Bucky and Steve to the floor where they wisely stayed put. Yells and the sound of gunshots broke through the revving motor of the speeding truck.

"Wow." Bucky had a lot of questions to ask. He had no idea what was going on or even where he was. "So, umm," he reached up to scratch his head, "what'd I miss?" His hand jerked away the same instant that it touched his head. A split second of panic struck him as he stared at his hand trying to find out what had been so strange. A glint of sun reflected of off his metal hand and he flexed it, trying to absorb this new information. He started moving it carefully, testing it out, "Wow, that's a lot to take in." He didn't remember losing his arm when he fell. Howard must've made this metal prosthetic for him. "Nobody thought about consulting me about the design? Where is Howard anyway?" A glimmer of apprehension flitted through Steve's eyes.

"You—" Whatever Steve was going to say was cut away by a sharp pain ripping through Bucky's head. This one didn't fade away quickly and it dragged him into semi-consciousness. It was like he had taken someone else's place. He found himself on a table with men in white coats surrounding him. A searing pain started ripping apart his shoulder.

.

Steve watched helplessly as Bucky threw himself backward against the side of the truck, gripping his shoulder and screaming in pain.

.

The vision morphed into another room and the men lost their white coats and instead wore camo and holsters. Icey metal surrounded his head and stuck to his sweaty face. Straps bound his hands, his shoulders, his feet. He couldn't move a muscle, couldn't make a noise.

.

"Bucky. Bucky, you're okay." Steve had both hands full trying to keep Bucky from hurting himself. He was flailing around the truck, kicking and punching at invisible foes.

"No!" The scream was repeated over and over, "No! Leave me alone."

.

A voice echoed through the cavernous room, "Wipe him." Bucky couldn't fight, couldn't protest, couldn't open his mouth. Lightning seared through his head, burning, setting every muscle on fire. The pain reached the limit and everything blacked out.

Bucky went limp and the truck stopped rocking. His eyes popped open and he pushed himself up, rubbing his head. "I'm hallucinating things, man. What's going on?" He locked eyes with Steve, "I need a lot of explanations."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Falling off that train."

Steve sighed, "Well, that was a while ago. You have… amnesia, sort of. Tony thought that he could help, and we've apparently made significant improvement, but not total recovery."

"What do you mean? My memory is fine. I remember everything. Wait, you mean that I've been out and about since our last mission?"

A small bitter smile crossed Steve's face, "You could say that."

"That's crazy, man." He absently pushed his hair behind his ear and then stopped. He gently reached back up and ran his fingers through his hair. "It really has been a long time. Why haven't I been cutting my hair?"

"It wasn't a priority. Don't worry, I think girls like long hair nowadays."

Bucky huffed, "What do you mean 'nowadays'?"

Steve sighed then locked eyes with Bucky, "You fell in '45. It's 2014." Steve's words had triggered something, and pain swamped Bucky's brain. Images came flooding through his head, but this time, he knew that they were memories, not hallucinations. People screamed at him, punched him in the face and in the stomach. He screamed at the same people and punched them in the face and in the stomach and everywhere else. Then a series of killings flashed before his eyes. People shot in the head, a man drowned in his own pool to look like an accident, suffocation, stabbing, poison. Then one last mission. There was a car, Bucky stepped in front of it. The two occupants looked not terrified but shocked. Tires squealed, and metal crunched. He heard his name, but all it took was one blow and he stood in complete silence.

Bucky's eyes snapped open.

"Buck, are you okay?" Bucky felt numb. The weight of everything that he had remembered glued him to the floor of the truck. He knew he had to tell Steve, but how could he? How could he ever admit to Steve that he had killed one of their best friends—Howard Stark?

"I'm fine." He temporarily shoved the past behind him and focused on the present. "Where are we going?"

"This truck is supposed to take us out of town. From there we'll have to find a place where we can hole up while we're trying to work things out with the law."

"No. Let's get out now. I want to find her."

"Who?"

"The girl that helped me out. Her name was Cassie or something like that."

"We need to get out of here. The city could go on virtual lock-down if they have enough evidence that you're here."

"I need to talk to her. She's something of a fugitive herself and has some neat technology to help her hide. Get the van to stop."

"I don't know, Buck…"

"Steve, I'm not gonna run. Stop the truck."

Steve sighed, "Do you know where she is?"

"Yeah, I think so."

.

.

* * *

An instant feeling of déjà vu hit me when I opened my eyes and found myself in the back of a car. This time, instead of crying, I woke up angry. I couldn't remember what I was mad at, I just felt the anger seething inside of me, waiting for an excuse to pick a fight. The car hit a pothole. That was enough of an excuse for me.

"If you're gonna kidnap me and drag me away from my home, the least you could do is drive right." Paul didn't acknowledge my existence which only fueled the flames. "How long have I been a hostage?" He didn't need to answer when I saw the clock on the dashboard. "Two hours? Wait," I touched the inside of my elbow and felt a drop of dried blood, "did you drug me?" Paul checked in his rearview mirror and changed lanes. He was avoiding a fight and I wasn't gonna have any of that. I viciously kicked his seat, "What kind of a whacked up bodyguard are you anyway?"

His resolve was slipping, "If you don't calm down, I'm gonna do it again."

"Oh, brilliant. Now you're threatening me. I feel so protected." Paul jerked around and I thought he was gonna hit me, but he turned back just in time to pull us back to the right lane. The squawking horns of the cars going the other way gave me the satisfaction of knowing that other people were mad at Paul too.

"I'm saving your damn life. That's what I'm doing. Meanwhile, you think you can maul me in any way you want. I'm not putting up with any more abuse, so you better shut up and cut the attitude out."

"What do you mean 'maul' you?" For the first time, I noticed a large cut on Paul's forehead, unbandaged and still oozing blood. "Did I do that?" Some of my anger was sucked away by the sight of actual physical damage that I might've inflicted.

"What do you think?"

"Well now, how would I know? You drugged me, remember?"

"I gave you a sedative for your own good, and while I was doing that, you hulk out and destroy the whole room, throwing me against the wall, cutting my face on your stupid shattered Christmas lights, and knocking me unconscious so I could lay in a pile of shattered glass."

"Well, I sincerely apologize. There is absolutely no excuse for my actions since I was in full control of all my senses at the time. Oh, wait, I wasn't. I wonder whose fault that is." The car swerved again.

"Listen, freak…" He started yelling at me, but I was yelling over him, "Freak? I am not a freak, you stupid jerk…" We screamed at each other, our tempers at full flare. The roads were empty which was good because we were swerving all over.

"Just shut up," Paul screamed. "If I had the freak gene, I swear I would choke you right now."

"What is your problem? It's called super powers. SUPER POWERS! I'm not a freak, I'm a superhero."

"Yeah, right. You, a superhero? You're just a stupid kid who had the power to get her parents killed."

"Stop it." My voice was cracking and rough, "It wasn't my fault. They should've just given me over to Hydra. It would've been fine with me."

"Yeah, at least then you could've fulfilled your true calling as a villain freak." Rage and pain spiraled out of control. The air pressure inside the car skyrocketed. The windows shattered, but none of the glass touched me. Air swirled around me. Paul screaming and apologizing faded into the background as the pain and hurt of the past ten years roared in my ears. I wanted to lash out, wanted to hurt someone. I wasn't thinking, couldn't think about anything. Something was warning me that what I was doing was wrong. Just a small warning light in my brain was trying to keep me from doing something I would regret forever. The door next to me ripped off the car, and I was sucked out, flying across the road. Everything blurred. My body curled under the g-forces and then I slammed into something and the world went black.

.

.

* * *

Buck didn't even knock. He just pushed the door open and closed it as soon as Steve had stepped in. Strangely enough, he did knock on the door under the staircase and started asking someone to let him in. Steve could figure that this girl must have some kind of underground hideout, but he wasn't sure exactly who Buck was talking to. Whoever it was must not have responded quickly enough, because the next thing Buck did was kick in the door. He winced as he stepped on the first step and pulled something out of his shoulder.

"Poison darts. She must be on lockdown."

"Poison? You got shot with poison? Is it lethal?"

"Relax, Steve. I'm immune to stuff like this. Super soldier serum, remember?" For a second, Steve thought he saw a smirk playing around Bucky's lips, but the next minute it was gone and the thunder cloud was back.

"Come on." Bucky led the way down the stairs, into complete darkness. He started feeling along the walls, "The lights are automatic, but there might be a switch too." Steve started feeling along the opposite side, but almost immediately pulled back with a grunt of pain.

"You okay, Stevie?"

"There's something sharp on the walls. Glass probably." Buck didn't reply, but a few seconds later, a single light flickered on.

"I found the…" Buck's voice trailed off and he gazed at the scene in front of him. The lone flickering light revealed the disaster that the room was in. Nothing was upright, the sofa had broken into several pieces, and every glass item in the room, except the one working light, was shattered into tiny shards. Worst of all were the hundreds of comic books, now strewn across the room, dirty, bent, and ripped into hundreds of individual pages.

"What happened here?" Steve asked rhetorically. Buck turned and strode out of the room, Steve followed. The room they entered was full of computers, and nothing seemed to be harmed. Bucky started talking to someone named Alfred, but nobody was around, and nobody answered.

"Buck, we need to get out of here. Something big must have happened, and somebody must've noticed. This place could be swarming with police anytime."

"Hold on." He started typing into one of the computers, and a security video popped up. For the next four minutes, they watched the conversation between the man and the girl. There was no sound, but things were obviously escalating. The girl was getting hysterical and she didn't even see the man coming. He jabbed a needle into her arm, and the video cut off as, presumably, the room blew out.

"Alright, we got to go," Steve said. Bucky quickly acquiesced and they started walking out of the building.

"We have to find her."

"I thought you said that guy was her bodyguard."

"He is."

"Then what's the problem?"

"You don't know the guy, he's erratic and has a serious temper problem. I don't think she's safe."

"You're not safe, Buck. We've got no business interfering in her problems. We have to worry about you first."

"She helped me. Do you think you ever would've found me if it weren't for her?" Steve worked his jaw. "Look," Bucky continued, "I appreciate your concern for me, but I like this kid, and I have a feeling she's in trouble."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

By all rights, I should've woken up in a quiet field with a kindly farmer standing over me. He would take me to his house to meet his wife and kids. They'd feed me and give me a place to sleep and eventually decide to adopt me. Reality? Reality never happens as it ought to.

I regained consciousness to the sound of sirens and yelling. Policemen swarmed the site, and paramedics scurried around checking on people. My eyes closed again. My head felt like fire. Someone was talking to me, yelling in my face.

"Can you hear me? Hey, can you hear me? She's unconscious again, someone get an oxygen mask." The mask was forced onto my face. Pure oxygen rushed through my lungs, and my mind snapped back to reality, bright and cold.

"What happened?" My words were muffled and distorted through the mask.

"Shhh, you're all right. We're gonna get you to the hospital." He waved someone over, and they started rolling the stretcher I was on towards an ambulance. I freaked out and started kicking and trying to roll off the stretcher, but all I managed to do was knock off the oxygen mask.

"Wait," I yelled, "just hold on one second," the words sounded strange and unintelligible. The stretcher stopped rolling, and one of the guys reached out to put the oxygen mask back on.

"No, wait. I need to get up," my speech was definitely slurring. The man who had been there when I woke up, rubbed my shoulder soothingly, "There, love." I caught my breath as I noticed the subtle British accent for the first time. "You have a nasty concussion, and your speech is slurring. Just lay still and let us take care of you." I took a deep breath and forced my mouth to form the words, "What are they doing?" I pointed to where there were firemen gathered around a collapsed building, digging and pulling away debris. The paramedic seemed to understand what I said and answered, "There was someone in the apartment when it collapsed. We're hoping that she gets the same miracle that you did." He explained when he saw my confusion, "A massive bar fell right on you but stopped millimeters above you. We still don't know what was keeping it from crushing you. We're also not sure how you got a concussion. Nothing even touched you." I was trying to get up but fell back half unconscious. This seemed to recall the paramedic to the situation at hand.

"Just lay still. We'll get you to the hospital." Last effort, I rolled off the stretcher. The paramedics yelled in surprise and started trying to get me back on. I waved them off, "Leave me alone, I'm okay." And really, my speech was clearing up and my eyesight was getting sharper. The second paramedic with a sharp voice and a decidedly un-British accent started berating me for making it hard on them. I stopped struggling and turned to the British paramedic, "What's your name?" He was a bit taken aback but answered, "Dylan."

"Dylan, will you please ask your friend to back off?" He hesitated. "Right now." He nodded at the other paramedic who moved away muttering. Without him yelling in my ear, my head cleared some.

"Listen, I don't need medical assistance and I don't want medical assistance. I am allowed to refuse to be taken to the hospital, right?"

He hesitated again, "I guess that kind of depends on how old you are. No offense, but I'm not sure that you are quite eighteen."

I feigned surprise, "Of course I'm eighteen. In fact, I turn nineteen in two months." I tried my best to look mature. "You understand that you could have brain damage. We really need to get you checked out."

"Yeah, I get it. But I am officially refusing medical assistance. Don't worry, I'm not gonna sue you or anything."

He shrugged, "Fine then." I carefully pushed myself to an upright position and then started slowly standing up. Dylan offered me a hand and I used it to steady myself. I couldn't remember exactly how I had gotten here, but I knew that this had to be my fault and that I had to help. I took a moment to assess the situation. It was a large two-story apartment complex, but only the two apartments on the end had completely crumbled. The two that directly connected to them were partially wrecked, but it looked like anybody in them could easily have survived. I quizzed Dylan about who had been in the building at the time.

"Nobody was in the top apartment, but there was a girl in the bottom one. Her parents were at work, but she had come home from school."

"School? How old is she?"

"Six." My body went numb. A six-year-old girl was trapped under tons of rubble and could be dead. I dropped to the ground and reached my hand out. I felt through thousands of air molecules. I felt the breath of the bystanders, I felt the jerky breathing of the sobbing woman who must be the mother. I felt the air molecules being dragged through the lungs of the heavily breathing diggers. Forcing my senses beyond them, I felt the slightest motion in the air in the middle of the wreckage.

"She's alive," I breathed. I tried to find out what kind of position she was in, but my grasp on the molecules was weak. I pushed myself up and started stumbling closer. A policeman stepped in front of me and held me back.

"What do you think you're doing? Nobody is allowed past here." I tried to push past him, tried to explain that I was here to help. I wasn't thinking clearly enough to convince him, and he was getting irritated. Dylan showed up and grabbed my arm. He started explaining to the officer, "I'm dreadfully sorry. She's had a nasty concussion and went a bit daft." He pulled me away. A yell came from the building. I jerked around in time to see the entire wreckage shift and fall in. The sobbing mother screamed and the rescue crew stood back in shock. I jerked away and sprinted towards the building, energy pumping through my body. Policemen started running towards me to stop me. With an extra burst of adrenaline, I pushed everybody away from the building. Now that I was close, I could effortlessly feel the breath coming from the girl.

"She's still alive," I yelled. The policemen had regained their feet and they all had their guns pointed at me.

"Stand down. Put your hands above your head, no sudden movements." I didn't have time to try to reason with the law. I threw up a wall of air to keep them away from me and started working on the girl. I could feel a large beam laying on her legs as well as smaller debris covering the rest of her body. I experimentally blasted the beam with a gust of air, but thousands of pounds of other debris lay on top and I couldn't even budge it. This was bigger than anything I had ever done. My thoughts dropped to my lower back and I gently touched the hard patch next to my spine. I knew that I might not physically be able to do this. I wondered if I should just let the rescue team keep working on it. The wreckage started shifting again, and I knew that the girl wasn't gonna survive if I didn't do something now. The memory of being in the car with Paul flashed through my head, and I remembered the feeling of power that had surged through my body, sending me flying. Reaching deep, I tried to summon that power again. A moment of calm surfaced as I focused all my energy on the girl. Then chaos arose as with a single blast, every beam, brick, and piece of drywall stood straight up and fell outwards away from the girl. Lightning shot up my back and I hit the ground like a rag doll, blacking out for the fifth time that day.

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* * *

Steve leaned over Natasha's shoulder, "Find anything?"

"I've barely started looking, Rogers. Give me a few seconds, I'll find her." Steve moved back and looked over to Bucky who was sitting on a couch staring at the ground.

"Well, don't take too long." Natasha huffed and looked over at Bucky. "What's so important about this girl exactly?" she murmured, quiet enough so that Bucky couldn't hear.

"I don't know. I think he's using her as a coping mechanism. He remembers everything, and it's crushing him. Finding this girl is a distraction for him."

"Everything?" Her voice dropped even lower, "Even Howard Stark?"

Steve gave a terse nod and whispered, "I've heard him apologize to Howard twice now when he thinks I can't hear him."

Natasha raised her voice to a normal level, "I'm searching security camera footage for anyone close to your description. We should be able to find her in a few minutes."

"That won't work," came from Bucky.

"What?"

"She has some kind of protection system that blocks her from security cameras," he informed them.

"Great. Plan B, then." She started typing. She clicked around and started scanning through news reports of strange occurrences. Both Steve and Bucky gathered around as she sped through videos of reporters.

"Stop. That one." Natasha stopped and rewound to the start of the video. A female reporter was narrating footage of a collapsed apartment building. Policemen were gathered in a semi-circle around a girl with her back to them. Their guns were drawn and they seemed to be pounding on some invisible surface in front of them. The camera zoomed in, getting closer to the girl.

"That's her. That's Cassie," Bucky said. The collapsed building began to shift and move. Something exploded, and debris shot everywhere. The reporter was freaking out as much as the people on the ground who were screaming and running for safety. The cloud of dust settled down, and the news cameras zoomed in on a small girl lying in the middle of a circle of clear space. Paramedics swarmed in, gently and quickly tending to the girl.

"Where did she go?" Natasha rewound the video a few seconds and put it on slow-motion. Through the cloud of dust, they could see a giant beam fall directly on top of Cassie as she crumpled to the ground. Steve winced, "I'm sorry, Buck."

Bucky growled, "You're not getting out of this search that easily. We don't know she's dead, and I have reason to believe that she's alive." Steve and Natasha met eyes and shook their heads. Then Natasha turned back to the computer, "Alright, that was in Virginia, about two hundred miles away. This feed was live about twenty minutes ago, and I have something that can get you there in ten minutes." This time, Steve and Bucky exchanged glances.

"Okay," Steve said, "let's go."

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* * *

Paul pushed himself off of the gravel. He cursed as pain shot through his body. He walked back towards the road. A mangled pile of metal marked where his car had slammed into a minivan face on at sixty miles per hour. A pool of blood trickled out of the shattered window of the minivan. Oil from a broken fuel line mixed with the blood, turning it a murky brown.

"It's a good thing that brat threw me out of the car," he muttered.

His phone screen was shattered, but it still turned on. He brushed a few shards of glass off of his hand as he waited. The phone beeped and a red dot appeared on the screen.

"Virginia? The brat covers ground fast. Sorry, kid, you're not getting away that easily." He pushed the phone back into his pocket and pulled a matchbox out. He bent over and looked through the window of the minivan to the broken corpses hanging by their seatbelts.

"No hard feelings," and he dropped the burning match into the puddle of bloody oil. The mound of metal and plastic combusted, and the stench of burning flesh filled the air. As he walked away, Paul patted his pocket where his phone was, "Don't go anywhere, freak. I'm coming to find you."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

The hospital room was surprisingly white. Compared to the last place that I woke up, this really wasn't bad. Only two things posed an issue: first, even the slight motion of breathing set my entire torso on fire. Second: the silhouette of a man shone through the window in the door. His only movement was an occasional shift from side to side. It didn't register what he was doing until a doctor opened the door and I caught a glimpse of the fully uniformed policeman. The doctor left the door slightly ajar and walked to the side of my bed.

"How do you feel?" I took a breath to answer but my body protested and I settled with rolling my eyes dramatically at him. He chuckled and twisted a nob on the IV machine.

"I'm turning your pain medication up. You have four shattered ribs, one compound fracture, possibly a cracked vertebrae, and don't forget that nasty concussion. You're really in deep water, love."

"Dylan?" the word escaped me as my mind snapped into place and I recognized the accent. Again resorting to my face to express my thoughts, I gave him a confused look. He shrugged, "I don't usually work ambulance duty, they were shorthanded and this big call came. I just went along for the ride. Obviously, I asked to have you on my rounds when I got back. Everybody is talking about you." He wrote a few things on a piece of paper and then turned to leave.

"You have a surgery scheduled in two hours. Someone will be up to prep you soon."

The door banged open and three men stormed in, pushing a hospital bed on wheels.

"Hey, what are you doing?" They shoved Dylan out of the way and pushed the two beds together.

"Relax, kid," one of the men answered, "She's being transferred to a more secure hospital." Dylan eyed the alarm button a few feet away from him, "She's supposed to have surgery before she is moved." One of the men moved away from the bed and started walking towards him, "The plan changed. She has been deemed a threat to this hospital."

"She can barely move—" his words ended in a grunt as the butt of a pistol slammed into the side of his head. The man flipped the gun around in his hand and then nodded at the others, "Get moving. We need to get out of here." Rough hands grabbed my ankles and an arm wrapped around my shoulders. The two men yanked me to the other bed, ripping out my IV line at the same time. The sheer pain was almost enough to make me black out again, but I settled for a desperate scream.

They practically sprinted as they pushed my bed through the hospital and huffed with impatience on the elevator. The elevator doors opened and they ran out onto the roof of the hospital. A helicopter waited for us, ready for immediate departure. With no regard to my pain, I was pushed into the helicopter. The three men jumped in behind me, and the helicopter took off immediately.

About thirty minutes in, I coughed. The pain from that one cough was enough to last a lifetime, but it didn't stop there. Something was tickling my throat and the urge to cough was overwhelming. The more I coughed, the more I needed to cough and the worse the pain got. I had the attention of the men, and they did not look happy. Something sticky started filling my mouth as I coughed. It dribbled onto my lips, but my arms refused to move to wipe it off.

The men started yelling at the pilot of the helicopter to go faster. Something sharp started making its way through my lungs and up my windpipe. The only thing I could think was how much I wanted a bullet through my head. Before this, the worst pain I had ever felt was a scraped knee or the good pain of pulling a tooth out. This was agony beyond what I could've imagined and to top it off, breathing became next to impossible. Every second felt like it should be the last, but I endured it for almost ten minutes before I felt the jolt of the helicopter touching solid ground. Air that I was incapable of breathing rushed in as the door was flung open and the men jumped out. I was dragged out of the helicopter and placed back on a rolling bed. My head jerked to the side as I coughed up more blood and I caught a glimpse of my surroundings. All I could see was clouds. I jerked to the other side and saw the same thing. Somehow, I was on some helicarrier floating thousands of feet above the ground. The fact that I was coughing up bits of my skeleton paled in comparison to the deep trouble I was in.

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* * *

Bucky and Steve stood at the hospital front desk, waiting for the receptionist to get off the phone. The pretty young brunette set the phone down and smiled extra sweetly at the two studs leaning on her desk.

"What can I do for you two?"

Steve ignored the batting eyelashes and got down to business, "We're looking for a girl that would've been brought in from an accident about forty minutes ago."

"Name?"

"Cassie Jungwirth." She tapped a few words into her computer.

"There's no one here with that name. Sorry." Steve looked over at Bucky who leaned forward and shot a question at the receptionist, "You don't have any young girls with serious injuries that have been admitted in the past hour?" She seemed taken aback at his intensity, "I didn't say that. We do have two girls who were admitted to intensive care about thirty minutes ago."

"Great, was one of them a blonde teenager about 5'7" probably wearing some kind of athletic pants?" She opened her mouth to answer.

"Is there a problem here?" A woman in scrubs appeared. The receptionist started to answer again, but the woman stopped her.

"Thank you, I'll take it from here." She started forcefully walking the boys away from the desk, "How can I help you?" They described who they were looking for.

"I'm sorry, we don't have anyone of that description." Bucky started to protest.

She interrupted, "Now if you don't have any other business here, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. We're very busy and no loiterers are allowed." She stopped at the doors.

"What? But…"

"Don't make me call security."

"We just need to talk. Listen…" The woman nodded at some guys in uniforms and they started moving towards them. Bucky stepped forward threateningly. Steve put a hand on his shoulder and gently pulled him back, "Okay, we're leaving. Sorry for any inconvenience." They backed out of the hospital and stopped when they were out of sight.

"Well, they're hiding something," Steve said.

"You think?" Bucky shot back.

Steve grinned at him, "Good to see you still have your witty sarcasm." The ghost of a smile flitted across Bucky's face but was quickly replaced by grimness.

"Let's find out what this hospital is hiding."

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* * *

The first thing that I noticed was the air. It flowed effortlessly and painlessly through my lungs. More than that, I could see it shimmering throughout the room without even trying. I moved my arm, testing it out. I no longer had to grasp onto the molecules and push them, rather they acted as an extension of my arm, waving gently around the room. I stopped playing around and noticed a small current coming from the ceiling.

"Air conditioning? Nice." I swung my legs off of the bed and stood up. My legs wobbled and I caught myself on the edge of the bed. Reminding myself to take it easy, I started feeling around the walls of the room, trying to determine what they were made of and if there were any weak chinks. Behind me, a small slot opened and a plate of mushy food was pushed through. A surprisingly pleasant voice slipped through the slot as well, "Be careful and take it easy. We fixed you up really well, but you're still vulnerable. Don't reinjure yourself." I reached out and took the plate of food, "I'll try my best. Thanks."

"Anytime." The slot closed.

Two days passed with no human contact beyond the lady who brought me food three times a day. I spent the time playing around with my powers, trying to figure out what had changed and remaster the art. I may also have occasionally screamed for someone to give me music to listen to, but my requests were ignored.

On the third day, I was on a five-minute streak of banging my head against the wall when it opened and a man gestured for me to follow him. He led me through hallways into a large room full of medical tools and machines. I stepped inside, and he closed the door behind me. On the other side of the room, another door opened, and a man in a white coat walked in, closing the door behind him. He strode towards me, "Let's see what all the fuss is about." Midstride, he grabbed a small hammer of some kind and hurled it at me. It hit me squarely in the forehead, leaving a stinging red spot. He stopped and glared at me for a few seconds. He leaned in and said, "This is very simple. You show me what you can do, how you do it, and how much you can do of it. That's it. I'm in and out. Easy-peasy."

I snorted, "Well, you could've told me that before you started throwing hammers at my face."

He leaned back, "Some people are reluctant to cooperate. The element of surprise forces them to show their hand."

"Yeah, well, I have no reflexes, so watch it." I rubbed my forehead.

He smirked, "This is gonna be one of the easy ones. Great." He pulled a rolling chair out and sat down, "So, let's talk."

He questioned me about the origins of my powers: when I first noticed them, when I first gained control over them, etc. I knew that this guy was either Hydra or some leftover remnant of SHIELD, but I didn't really see the need to lie or refuse to answer. What harm could anything I tell him possibly do?

He wanted to know if what I had done at the apartment had been the biggest thing I had ever done. Then he started questioning me about changes in my powers. He asked if it felt different since the surgery they had performed on me, and asked how it affected me.

"Would you say that you feel stronger?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

He nodded knowingly, "You should also find that your endurance is much improved."

"Why? What'd you guys do to me?"

"Besides fixing up all those shattered bones and a punctured lung, we simply disabled the scrambling device implanted in your spine. Very interesting that, by the way. Do you want to tell me about it? It was primitive, we weren't even sure if it did anything at all. Still, it must've taken a lot of money and know-how to get anything even that good." I looked down at the floor and touched the spot on my back where the chip had been.

"My dad was trying to find a way to stop the powers. It never worked, though. It mostly just acted up when I was doing big things and it took away my stamina. He died before he could get it right." I looked him in the eye and raised my eyebrow sarcastically, "You want to tell me about that?"

"Ah, yes." He leaned back in his chair, "That was not my department."

"So you are Hydra."

"Well, yeah. Didn't you know that already?"

"I wasn't sure."

"Well, then." He stood up and spread his arms out, "Allow me to officially welcome you to team Hydra."

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* * *

The blue jeep had been behind him for over ten minutes. Paul glanced in the rearview mirror again.

"They can't have found me this quickly," he reassured himself. His sweaty hands re-gripped the steering wheel. A few minutes later, he relaxed as the jeep passed him and drove out of sight.

"Relax, Paul. You're gonna find the girl before they even notice that you're back on the grid." He glanced at the GPS and changed lanes.

* * *

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I snorted, "I appreciate it, but you do know that your team is practically nonexistent, not to mention that it stinks."

He gestured around the room, "We have one of the most technologically advanced machines in the world. We have bases around the world. We're on the verge of having the most powerful army in the world, and you define that as nonexistent? SHIELD was just one facet of our operation. Its fall was barely a minor setback."

"What do you mean? What army?"

He smiled and stepped closer, "You haven't heard? We've been working on a small collection of superhuman species. You're the latest specimen and rather impressive, too." I moved away from him, unsure what to think. Surely they couldn't really have an army of superhumans.

"I am not going to be one of your assassins."

He actually laughed, "Assassin? No. You have no skills, no coordination, no deception; you don't even have reflexes. No, you will be a soldier. A mindless, emotionless, powerful piece in our game."

"No."

"Yes. In fact," he motioned to the guard outside, "I have all the information I need from you. Your first session starts now." A group of men entered, a few with guns drawn. They started steering me towards a chair with restraints. The shimmer of their breath around me gave me an idea. I grabbed and pulled. They all promptly started gasping and choking, trying to get air. With little or no air in their lungs, they were all on the ground unconscious in just a few seconds.

I didn't know what to do, so I ran. I sprinted out the door and through hallways. Every time that I passed someone, they would call out and aim their weapon at me. I blew them all away and kept running.

I passed a door and then backtracked when I felt the massive amounts of air behind it. I blasted the door open and ran out into the open air on top of the helicarrier. There was only one option. I ran towards the side, ready to fling myself over. With no warning, the air disappeared from my vision and I couldn't feel a single molecule. I skidded to a stop and turned around to see a lone man staring at me. He moved his hands, and the next second I was flying back through the door. The man stepped in after me and closed the door.

"I'm guessing you're part of their army. Congrats." He just stared at me.

"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" It was the man in the white coat, "We didn't remove the chip that your dad implanted, we simply updated it. Don't worry, all the kids have them these days. We can't have all of you running around with no way to control your powers. You'll find that we can turn them on and off whenever we want, so I suggest that you don't try anything again." He nodded at some guards and they hauled me through the helicarrier back to the chair. My arms were locked down and something was placed over my head. Someone flipped a switch and a burning pain shot through my head. All my thoughts faded as I gave into my primal instinct and started screaming.


	9. Chapter 9

Last chapter, guys. It might feel a little bit like it was haphazardly slapped together. That would be because it was. Thanks for bearing with me through the sloppy writing.

* * *

Chapter Nine

He was getting close. The red dot that symbolized Cassie hadn't moved in three days, and he had been driving relentlessly. Paul took a sip of coffee and turned the radio volume up. Country music took over the sounds of the road, and Paul felt the knots in his muscles start to loosen. The catchy strains even had him humming along when something flashed in his rearview mirror. He did a double take and froze. A black car was tailgating him, purposefully staying close enough that the driver could be seen. Through the mirror, Paul stared into the eyes of the last person he ever wanted to see. A broad smile broke out across the man's chiseled face and he stepped on the accelerator to nudge Paul's car. The bump jolted Paul out of his trance and he floored the accelerator. He wove through the stragglers just getting back from their lunch break and searched desperately for the nearest exit. The black car followed but didn't bother to try to stay close.

The driver chuckled to himself, "Run away. I have all day."

An exit came up fast, but at the last moment, Paul swerved away and continued down the highway. He could only hope that the next exit was close and much bigger. Soon signs for the next exit started flying by, and fortunately, they seemed to indicate a much larger town. He swung into the exit and sped down the street. He ran a red light and slammed into a motorcycle. The bike and its rider crumpled. The car bounced as it ran over some part of the motorcycle or the rider. Paul sped on. He found what he was looking for and turned into the parking lot of a mall. He slowed down and tried not to draw attention to himself as he parked his car and hurried inside. The mall was busy and plenty of people were still eating lunch.

Paul started walking through the food court, looking for someone to use as cover. He spotted a man sitting alone at a table with his motorcycle helmet sitting beside his food. Paul pushed up his sleeves a bit to show more of his tattoos, and walked over to the table, "What bike do you ride?"

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The driver of the black car strolled through the mall, casually scanning for Paul. From the second story, he caught a glimpse of Paul down at the food court. He smirked and stepped on the escalator going down.

Paul froze in his conversation when the man sat down two tables away and waved congenially.

"Is he a friend of yours?" Ray the biker asked.

"No." Paul broke his gaze away and turned back to Ray, "I've never seen him before." Ray nodded and then reached for his helmet, "I gotta go, man. It was good talking to you." Paul jumped up beside him, "Why don't you let me buy you a coffee?" Ray glanced at his watch, "Sorry, maybe some other time." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He scribbled something on it and handed it to Paul, "Call me." Paul watched desperately as Ray walked away. He crumpled the paper and dropped it on the ground.

"He seemed nice." The voice sent prickles down Paul's spine. He straightened up and turned to face the man.

"You can't do anything here, Braxton. You can't risk letting anyone know that Hydra is still around."

Braxton chuckled, "Using innocent people as your shield… It's a solid strategy. The only problem is that it only works against the 'good' guys. But you are right, this is a bit crowded. Why don't we go somewhere more private?" He nudged a gun against Paul's side.

"No deal. If you were gonna shoot me, you could have done it by now."

"You're right." He put away the gun and leaned in, his voice low, "I really just want to talk to you, but there is too much visibility here. I can't be caught helping a traitor."

"And I'm supposed to believe you because you have always proven yourself to be so trustworthy."

Braxton snorted, "You're one to talk." Paul looked away. "Listen, I'm trying to help you, but we have to move quickly." Paul weighed his options and then nodded.

They moved through the crowds of people, heads down. Paul stepped out through a side exit. A foot planted squarely on his back and he hit the other side of the alley.

"You are truly desperate to rely on me for help. You thought that I would ever do anything other than pulverize you?" Paul leaned against the wall, panting.

"No, not really." He whipped around and fired his pistol. It was kicked out of his hand and skidded across the gravel.

"You're getting slow," Braxton taunted. "I guess you didn't get enough practice while you were hiding out with that girl." Paul swung his fist and connected with the palm of Braxton's hand. Braxton pulled him closer and whispered one word: "Coward." Paul's knee hit Braxton's crotch and he shoved him back. He pulled a knife out and brandished it in front of Braxton.

Braxton steadied himself, "You know I'm gonna kill you, right?"

"Not if I kill you first." He thrust the knife forward and felt it slide into skin and bump against bone.

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* * *

Cassie sat on the edge of her bed watching the black spots scurry across her vision. Just yesterday she had woken up to the beautiful glimmer of clean air. Today she couldn't even turn her head without her vision fading.

"Come on." A blurry figure hauled her up by her armpit. Cassie groaned. It was time for her third session in the 'electric chair'.

Two sessions a day, fifteen minutes each, they were filled with blinding pain and panic. Panic because even after only two sessions she was beginning to doubt her own memories. She found herself wondering if she had simply dreamed about the time when she spilled milk on her new Arrow comic book. She had decided that she must have just imagined a seven-year-old version of herself sneaking away from Paul and making a friend at the park. Nothing was solid memory anymore.

As the man supported her out of the room, she found herself looking forward to the pain. She knew that when it was over, they would lock her back up and let her use her powers again. It was the only thing that comforted her: the power rushing through her. She had never noticed how it coursed over her body. You never notice things until they're taken away from you. It was her power. Her power to fight for Hydra. No. That was the brain conditioning talking. She shook her head.

The straps snapped over her wrists. The metal pressed over her forehead. The foul taste of rubber filled her mouth as they stuffed a mouth guard in. Just fifteen minutes. It was worth it. She braced her body but still jolted as electricity coursed through her head. Her screams filled the room.

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* * *

Braxton cursed and pulled his hand off of the knife. Paul returned the curse as a roundhouse kick from Braxton sent the knife flying and his hand cracked from the blow. Both men stepped back and tended to their hands.

"I'll tell you what," Braxton panted, "in memory of our days working together, I'll forget about the fact that you just sliced open my hand. Give up now and I'll kill you quickly." He spread his arms, "It's not an offer you're gonna get from anyone else who you betrayed."

Paul rolled his eyes, "How many of you survived?"

"Oh, let me see…" Braxton swung a punch but Paul dodged it. "All of us."

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* * *

"I'm in the middle of a government inquiry, Rogers." Natasha sighed and shifted her phone to the other ear. "Alright, give me a second." She hung up and started typing into her phone.

"Ms. Romanoff, we need you back in here." She held up a finger and continued typing. Sliding her phone back into her pocket, she flipped her hair behind her shoulder and followed the man back into the courtroom.

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* * *

Steve's phone dinged. He started to look down at it, but then put his eyes back on the road.

"No texting while driving," he reminded himself. He held the phone over to Bucky, "It's from Natasha. See what she said." Bucky took it. A few seconds of silence later, Steve glanced over at Bucky to see him staring at the blank screen.

"Buck, you okay?" Bucky shifted his gaze to Steve and glared at him sarcastically.

"What?"

"I'm fine, Steve. Now are you gonna tell me how to use this thing or not?"

.

.

* * *

Paul finally got a solid hit in. Braxton stumbled backward. He steadied himself and prepared to block the next punch, but all he got was the sight of Paul's back as he sprinted away.

Paul pushed people aside as he sprinted up the escalator. His plans for finding Cassie were obliterated. His plans for a life of safety had crumbled. His last hope was to fight his way out, but he was under armed.

When he had failed to complete his part of the mission, he had assumed that the rest of the team hadn't made it out alive. Seeing Braxton was a shock, but he had always been the strongest, smartest, and fastest of the team—which is why he was the leader. It made sense for him to get out. But the rest of them? The lurch that Paul had left them in should have been inextricable.

If they had all gotten out, Paul knew that they would all be here. Braxton had come in alone because as team leader, he had the superior claim to killing Paul, but the rest of them would be here to cover the tracks and make sure nothing went wrong.

A policeman and a guy behind the counter were the only people in the firearm store. Paul pulled his second pistol out and shot both without stopping. He broke the glass between him and the AK-47 and immediately loaded a magazine into it. He grabbed several extras and stuffed them in his waistband.

As the prospective victim, Paul had the right to pick the battlegrounds. He chose the nearest Hot Topic. It was on the other side of the second floor. Paul sprinted the whole way with his head down. There were a few emo kids staring at creepy t-shirts and silently mouthing the words to the rock song that filled the room. Nobody even noticed when Paul slipped in between the tightly packed shelves with his AK-47. He pushed to the back of the store and slid down in the corner, nerdy keychains dangling in his face.

"Come on," he muttered. If they were smart, they would just wait until he had either been arrested by mall security or got out of the mall free. At that point, they could take him out with a single shot. Paul, however, was playing all his cards on the probability that they were mad enough at him and confident enough in their own abilities that they would come in after him despite the fact that Paul was armed, in a good position, and the mall was soon to be swarming with cops.

"What are you doing? You're not allowed to have guns in here." The blue haired punk kid had a small golden nametag that marked her as an employee. She sported a full black uniform consisting of shiny leather pants and a black tee with a white graphic outline of some punk rocker. A deafening crack from behind her was absorbed by the walls lined with t-shirts and someone screamed. The employee fell to the ground, the white lines on her shirt starting to turn red with blood.

.

.

* * *

"Hey, Sam? You said you were always up for a mission?" Steve shifted the phone to his other ear, "Yes, Natasha tracked it down. I'll text you the coordinates. You think you could meet us there? Great." He ended the call and gave the phone back to Bucky. He flipped on the blinker and changed lanes while giving Bucky helpful tips, "You should be able to just forward the message by pressing that button..."

.

.

* * *

It hurt to think. It wasn't worth it. Just repeat the words. The words would pour so easily through her mind. They would fit so well.

"You are Soldier 65. Your purpose is to serve Hydra." A barricade was holding the words back, refusing to let them penetrate.

"You are Soldier 65. Your purpose is to serve Hydra." This time, they continued, "Who are you?"

Who are you? Who are you? She was so tired. Her eyes closed and her mind slowed even more.

"I'm Soldier—" Her mind wanted to say the words, but her tongue wouldn't let her. "Cassie. My name is Cassandra Jungwirth." A light sparked in her mind and the past fifteen minutes of brain conditioning washed away and Cassie was back.

"Let me out, you jerks. You can't have me." The machine sparked into action and Cassie faded back into the background, oblivion surfacing again.

.

.

* * *

His last stand had failed, his attempt at suicide had been deterred, and he knew exactly what was coming next. The smooth floor of the mall stung his hands as he was shoved down to his hands and knees. Women screamed as someone fired a machine gun in the air.

"Everybody gather around. Now." The hoarse yell echoed through the mall. People were still running towards the exit. A man stepped in front of the door and started firing rounds at the people coming towards it. Using this method, they rounded everybody up in a circle in the middle of the mall.

The blindfold was pulled away from Paul's eyes. Two men held him down.

"If you start to leave, if you even move, you will be shot," the man with the machine gun yelled to the crowd. Children were screaming and women were sobbing. The man fired another round in the air, "Silence." A foot slammed into Paul's chest but the two men holding him didn't let him move.

"That's for stabbing my hand," Braxton said. Paul cursed at himself furiously for not having a cyanide pill with him. His heart started pounding. Braxton pulled out a knife and leaned in close to Paul. "All those years of hiding just for it to end like this. It's a shame." He gently flicked Paul's nose with the tip of the knife and smiled, "And I've never been happier."

.

.

* * *

"Why haven't they turned it on yet?" Cassie rolled over on the floor muttering. "It's time for them to turn it on. What's going on?" She tried to knock something over, tried to bring the tray of food towards her, but she was just grasping at nothing. She had no control over the air. She tossed and turned until she hit her head on the leg of the bed. Her head was numb and the blow didn't hurt her. She started kicking feebly on the walls. "Turn it on," she squeaked. The doors opened and two men grabbed her and lifted her up.

"No. It's not time yet. I just had a session. It's not time." She could barely hold her head up.

"It's okay, Cassie. It's Bucky and Steve. We've got you."

"Bucky," she mumbled. They carried her to the top of the helicarrier. The cold air stung her face, and the sun burned her eyes. A figure with wings appeared in front of her.

"Alright, help me get her strapped in." She was too tired to resist as they turned her around and started wrapping straps around her.

"You sure you guys got this?" the winged figure asked.

"Sam, we talked about this."

"Yeah, I know. Just considering your history with helicarriers…"

"We haven't failed yet. Get her out of here." Cassie suddenly found herself staring into an abyss of air which she had no control over. She screamed as she felt herself tipping and blacked out as she started freefalling through the air.

.

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 ** _The following part is a bit graphic. It's not too bad in my opinion, but I don't think it really fits with the K+ rating. Consider yourself warned. If you don't want to read graphicness, just skip to the next line._**

* * *

Braxton turned partially towards the crowd and raised his voice so that everyone could hear. "Paul Dykes, you have proven to be a traitor to Hydra. You betrayed your team and put them in immediate danger. By doing so, you have warranted not only the death penalty but death by public execution to be carried out immediately. As leader of the team, I claim the right to perform the execution. Are there any objections?" None of the men said anything. Braxton pulled a knife out and laid it gently on the side of Paul's neck.

"You know, in hindsight, if you wanted to hide from Hydra, you shouldn't have used one of our most wanted freaks as your cover. We always get what we want." Braxton rubbed the knife against Paul's neck and then started going around with the knife, gradually pressing harder as he went. Every woman in the mall was screaming, but Paul's screams rose above them as his neck was slowly, centimeter by centimeter, sliced open. The screams soon turned to gurgles as his vocal chords got severed and filled with blood. His shirt was soaked through with blood and there were puddles on the floor. Braxton saw that Paul couldn't live much longer and he stepped away and nodded at one of the men. The man cocked his gun and aimed carefully. He shot. Once for each foot. Once for each hand. Braxton stepped back into place and kept working the knife until there wasn't enough left to hold the head up. Its weight ripped the last few tendons apart and the head rolled onto the floor. The men let his body go, and it fell, allowing the last quarts of blood to flow out of Paul's body. Braxton wiped his knife off.

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place. Hail Hydra!"

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 _For the people that didn't read that, basically, Paul was executed Hydra style. Okay, carry on._

* * *

This wasn't my room. And this wasn't the room from the helicarrier. The bed I was in was soft and felt like memory foam. I carefully pushed the sheets back and found that I was in silky pajamas. I slipped out of the bed and glided to the door. I hesitated. The doorknob was cold in my hand. I turned it and the door clicked open. I looked both ways down the hallway, expecting a guard to be posted at my door. The hall was empty and silent. I stepped out of my room and wandered the halls. The murmur of voices attracted my attention, and I moved towards the room silently.

"It basically translates to: her powers are disabled."

"We can fix that, right?"

"Why would we?"

"Stark…"

"No, he's right," a woman's voice chimed in. "Listen, she's just a kid, and this is her opportunity for a normal life. She can disappear into the foster system."

"Yeah, disappear with no way of protecting herself if something should come up." I recognized that voice. Bucky was in there. I tapped on the door and stepped in the room.

"Hey, guys."

I didn't let them know that I had heard what they were talking about. I got some real food and a hot shower. They didn't say anything about helping me get my powers back, and I didn't say anything about the fact that the thought of foster care terrified me. I also didn't mention the pain in my head that no amount of ibuprofen could lessen or the fact that I kept waking up in the middle of the night, sweaty and terrified without remembering why. A lot of things seemed more important, like hearing the story of my rescue, and how Sam, the birdman, had flown me off of the helicarrier and how he had landed perfectly. I heard about the perfect landing multiple times.

I also occasionally heard people talking when they thought I wasn't around about what to do with me. I knew that normally, I would run away and live in the wild before I let anyone send me to a foster home, but without my powers, I was helpless and weak. I decided to just accept the time that I was given here. This was my rehab, and I would worry about fighting for my right to be here when they tried to get rid of me and not before. Besides, Thor was coming in a few days to help plan how to take the rest of Hydra out, and I was way too excited about that to worry about my future.

The End

* * *

This is the first "book" I've ever finished, so I'm celebrating with "Carry on Wayward Son" on repeat. Sorry about the ending, it's rubbish. It's pretty much just ending the divergence from canon and letting the timeline go back to normal (which leads to Age of Ultron). Thanks for reading the whole thing! I'm probably going to stick to one-shots for a while. Writing full stories is exhausting.


End file.
